


The Gates of Garmr

by leonidaslion



Series: Berserker [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Forced Prostitution, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Spirit Animals, Torture, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 19:14:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 30
Words: 53,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of timestamps in the world of Fetters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fear

**Author's Note:**

> Set about two months after Children of the Oak.
> 
> [Art](http://crisisarrives.livejournal.com/24183.html) by yume_odori  
> [Art](http://catsbycat.livejournal.com/34287.html) by catsbycat

It isn’t like Bonnie’s afraid of storms. It’s just that storms with lightning are loud. And there are unexpected flashes of light, and booms of thunder that make the house shake and knock the dishes around in the kitchen, and the rain sounds really, really eerie pattering against the window like that. Like it’s knocking and asking to come in and wet the walls and the floor. Overhead, the lights are flickering alarmingly, and the system can pass by any time now.

“Hey.”

The voice comes from right behind her and she shrieks, jumping forward and trying to turn at the same time. Her right foot catches against her left and she starts to tip over—is going to fall against the island and bang herself up but good. Except she doesn’t fall—is wrapped in strong arms instead, and briefly held close before being righted and released with a brief rub of her arms.

“Sorry. You okay?”

“Dean,” she manages, her heartbeat only coming faster now that she knows who she’s with. “You—I—I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I was being noisy,” he says, and Bonnie can tell he thinks it’s the truth.

Maybe he forgot to compensate for the noise of the storm outside, but it’s more likely Bonnie’s human limitations that he didn’t factor into the equation. She isn’t sure how long the two of them were living on their own—Al Rieu claims it’s forever, but Bonnie’s seen the way Mr. Singer is with them and she thinks he knew them when they were young. However long they were away, though, it was more than enough time to forget just how blind and deaf and helpless people are.

Sam tosses timber around like he’s handling matchsticks—and not just normal sized boards for the walls and floors, but huge, supporting beams that take three men and a winch to haul into place if Sam’s too busy to help. Bonnie’s seen Dean run, and he moves like sunlight on water; here one moment and then gone the next. Neither of them need to be alerted when someone arrives at the farm—Bonnie suspected they were psychic until they got into an argument over whether Erin Clarkson’s ride was a four or six cylinder engine and she realized they could hear the approaching cars from miles away.

Dean’s eyes are green as he looks down at her: he’s hiding the way he usually does, unless he’s distracted enough to let his guard slip. Bonnie can’t decide whether she prefers Dean’s attempts to blend in or if she would rather he kept the constant reminder like Sam does. The green is lovely—almost supernatural in and of itself, if you ask Bonnie, but Erin actually did ask _(Bonnie was there at the time; saw the embarrassed flush darkening Dean’s cheeks as he replied)_ and Dean says it’s his normal color. But it’s too easy to forget, when she’s looking at him like this. It’s too easy to wonder what he’d look like sprawled out on her bed and wearing a few less clothes.

 _Down girl,_ she tells herself as Dean moves past her to pull open the refrigerator door. It’s an antique model, serving as a stopgap measure until they can get something better in, and the engine starts coughing worrisomely almost immediately. Dean leans down, bracing himself with one hand on the door, and starts rooting around inside.

“What are you looking—”

His head comes up at the sound of her voice—nothing of a threat in the motion, just something clearly Other. The movement was too fluid—too quick—for the man he looks like on the outside.

And, just like that, Bonnie’s mild interest vanishes on a wave of awed unease.

Dean is a predator. He and Sam both are. Living with them is a foolish thing to do, when she knows next to nothing about what they’re like—what they eat. What they’re capable of doing when they’re in a bad mood. Dean’s eyes have gone golden, she notices, and they glint strangely as the overhead lights flicker from the storm.

And then the lights go out, leaving the kitchen draped in an inky darkness broken only by the surreal gleam of Dean’s eyes peering back at her.

It’s moments like this that remind Bonnie she has more to fear around here than a little bad weather.

“Generator should kick on in a minute,” Dean’s voice comes. It’s even softer than it normally is; gentle and almost hesitant, like he knows what she’s thinking.

He can’t, she reminds herself, but she can’t help taking a tiny, stealthy step backward.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” he says, still hushed. The eerie, twined glimmer fades, leaving the kitchen a complete blank, and Bonnie is certain that, if she could see, Dean’s eyes would be green again. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know,” Bonnie agrees. She surprised to realize that she means it—and then startled again to realize that she feels sorry for him.

He’s always trying so hard to fit in: hiding his eyes, chumming around with the menfolk, masking his abilities whenever Sam isn’t around to bring them out. And he’s never been anything but kind to Bonnie, even though half the time she can’t help lusting after him. She knows that sort of thing makes him uncomfortable—she sees how he is around Erin and the other girls.

The lights come back on again with an unexpected flicker and Bonnie realizes it too late to dissemble. Not that it would have mattered anyway; she’s always been a terrible poker player.

Dean, on the other hand, could give the most gifted cardshark a run for his money. Still, from the quickness with which he turns back to the open fridge—careful even now to keep his speed closer to human, but clearly anxious to get his back turned to her—Bonnie can tell he doesn’t appreciate the sympathy.

And it’s silly, really. Someone like her feeling sorry for something so beautiful and wonderful and strong.

But some deeply buried instinct moves Bonnie forward anyway. She watches his shoulders grow tense as she approaches _(doesn’t know if he’s listening to her footsteps or if he smells her)_ and stops when there’s still a respectable distance between them.

“So what are you looking for?” she asks again, keeping her voice light and cheerful.

There’s an awkward beat of silence and then he says, “I dunno. Something to eat.”

From the sound of the way he’s shifting things around on the shelves, he’s feeling more particular about what he wants than he’s admitting.

“Salty, bitter, sweet, sour?” she lists, trying to remember what she’s seen him eat at meals. Of course the only memory she can come up with right now is Sam hand feeding Dean a pepperoni-wrapped chunk of cheese. Serves her right for fixating on how pretty they are instead of what’s beneath the wrapping like she should have been.

“I dunno,” Dean says unhelpfully, but then, after shifting something else, he grudgingly adds, “Sweet,”

“We have some Rocky Road ice cream, I think. And there are oatmeal cookies in the cupboard.”

Dean makes dismissive little noises, but he’s relaxing into the conversation and that alone makes Bonnie feel like they’re getting somewhere. It’s the most she’s said to him since that night in the clearing and she isn’t sure, now, why she’s been so shy.

“We have some apples, I think,” she offers after a moment. “I could make apple crisp. Or, um, a pie, maybe?”

He pops up again at that, eyes gold but somehow not foreign. Bonnie used to see that hopeful, eager expression on her golden retriever Benji whenever she had something tasty that he wanted. Benji’s long gone, passed during Bonnie’s junior year of high school, but that expression still makes her laugh the way it always did.

“I guess that’s a yes,” she says, smiling.

“Oh, _hell_ yes,” Dean answers, shutting the fridge and moving over to drop down onto a stool near the counter. “Can I help?”

It isn’t until she’s smacked his hand for the fourth time that Bonnie understands that ‘help’ actually means ‘get underfoot and steal spoonfuls of filling at every possible second’.

Outside, the storm rages as loudly and threateningly as ever, but as Bonnie slides the prepared pie into the oven, leaving mixing bowls and spoons for the living legend behind her to lick clean, she pays it no mind.


	2. Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set a few months before Dean decides he wants his damn car back already.

Dean’s blood sings as he moves in the moonlight. Geri is strong and eager within him, scenting the air as Dean rushes through it and thrilling at the countless traces of life coating the concrete and glass and plastic and steel of the city around them. Not even the last, faint hints of car exhaust from the traffic of the day are enough to spoil the moment. Not when that soot-green scent is in his mouth, and the familiar grey burst of gunpowder, and Sam’s warm, comforting musk nearby. Dean doesn’t know how he lived for so long without that smell—the hue of a wheat-field drenched in sunset reds and oranges—coloring his world.

 **::Hunt now, think of Sammymate later::** Geri says, and the reminder of what they’re doing sets up a baying in Dean’s blood that’s still too new to be anything but intoxicating.

He thought he’d have trouble doing this, after the Arena. He thought the memories would overlay everything like ghosts and choke him with regret. But he’s too close to Geri to see this as anything but pure—anything but separate from those nights in the Arena, under the ground, away from the moon and the air and the wide, wide world.

If he’s ever taken again, Dean knows that the first thing he does will be to find a way out. He’ll chew through his own fucking wrists if he has to. He’ll tear his throat open with his own fingernails.

He won’t be shut up again like that. He can’t be.

Not after he’s had this.

“On your left!” Sam yells, and Dean doesn’t even bother to look—he can hear it coming, can smell it. He just turns the gun, lets loose another bullet, and the iron takes the gremlin high in the throat. The force of the shot tumbles it backwards under a car, but the soot-green scent of it _(like evergreens overlaid with exhaust)_ is already fading and Dean knows it’s dead.

There are more of the bastards, of course, and Dean’s immediately moving on to the next. He’s never heard of a nest this large, but he supposes downtown Detroit is the perfect breeding place for critters that like fucking with machinery.

 **::Flank,::** Geri snarls as it nudges Dean’s attention behind him, where there are two more gremlins lunging for his back. He turns, puts a bullet in each of them and reloads in the space of a breath.

Even as quickly as he and Sam can move these days, it’s another few minutes before all the gremlins are down and the barrel of Dean’s gun comes out of the encounter painfully hot to the touch. The street around them is littered with misshapen bodies—most small and spindly, but some the size of ponies. The soot-green scent is settling, clearing out the air and calming Dean a little, although Geri is just as energetic as ever.

“We get them all?” he asks, turning in a slow circle.

“Yeah,” Sam answers—no hesitation or doubt—and as Dean finishes his turn he finds Sam there, close enough to touch and looking at him intently. There’s an odd, tight expression on his brother’s face, and Dean’s chest goes wary.

“What?”

“You’re not hurt,” Sam says. He sounds surprised, which makes Dean feel even more anxious as he shakes his head.

“Why would I be?”

“I thought I smelled—” Sam starts, and then his face twitches and he shuts his mouth with a snap.

“You thought you smelled ...” Dean prompts.

“Nothing. Come on, let’s get out of here. Sun’ll take care of the bodies for us in a couple of hours.” He grabs Dean’s arm, ready to pull him toward the rust-bucket of a car they’re using these days, but it’s too late. Dean already caught whiff of it himself—no mistaking that scent, above all others.

Blood.

Geri has snapped to attention inside of him, hackles raised and muzzle twisted into a snarl. Dean can feel his own throat vibrating in a low, nervous growl as he takes a step around Sam and forward.

Sam moves with him, getting in front of him again. Getting between Dean and the source of the smell. Panic is sharp on Sam’s face, in his eyes.

“Dean, don’t.”

This time, Dean doesn’t bother going around. He shoves Sam to one side instead, darting forward before his brother can catch his balance and following his nose into the shadows of an adjacent alley.

The scent is stronger here. Thick and coppery, it slides in red-red-red sunburst patterns across Dean’s vision. He thinks about shoving Geri back so that the world isn’t quite so much of an acid trip, but he doesn’t. He needs the wolf close right now. Needs the comfort as he walks over to the dark, shaking shape against the alley wall and crouches beside it.

A boy. Maybe fifteen, but surely no older. Dark skin made darker by the filth of living on the street. The whites of his eyes are vivid in contrast, and the gleam of his teeth, which are bared in an agonized grimace.

Dean moves without thinking, getting in even closer and scenting where the boy is holding his stomach—scenting blood. He’s terrified he’ll find the telltale whiff of gunpowder or lead that tells him he missed his mark. Tells him he fucked up and hurt this kid, maybe got him killed.

The wound is sooty, and green, and not his doing at all, but this close the scent of the blood is overwhelming. Dean feels his grip on the present slipping, feels himself falling down the rabbit hole and back into the Arena, into the ring, where it always smelled like blood after the first, inaugural night because no matter how often they scrubbed it clean the scent never really came off.

His hands feel wet. There are slick, slippery things against his palms—someone’s insides—and the taste of copper on his tongue. There are bits and pieces of flesh caught between his teeth.

Dean lost count of the fucks—didn’t want to pay attention after a while, didn’t want to know—but he remembers every life he took. He remembers the way they felt when they died, the way he could feel the change in their lax skin. He remembers how the smell of shit and urine and panic—a gassy, yellow smell—would overlay the blood for a few seconds before evaporating into the air and leaving him with his hands full of meat and bone.

 _I’m sorry,_ he thinks. The only reason he isn’t saying it out loud is that his body has locked on him, frozen in a cascade of red. _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry._

Somewhere in the distance, Geri is whining and sending pulsing waves of reassurance and love. Somewhere in the distance, Sam is calling his name, and touching him, and trying to lift him to his feet and away from the past. Somewhere in the distance, the boy’s breath has gone wet and labored.

“I called an ambulance,” Sam says in his ear. “Dean, do you hear me? They’re on their way. They’ll take care of him.”

Sam is _touching him_ , Dean realizes suddenly. He’s known it for a while in a vague kind of way, but for the first time it strikes him as reality instead of just a stray fact and the thought that he’s getting all of that blood and filth on his brother makes him recoil with all the speed he can muster. His back hits the far wall of the alley a fraction of a second later. Sam’s eyes are still tracking him but the boy’s have closed—not dead yet, but heading that way.

“Dean, this isn’t your fault,” Sam says, rising slowly with his hands held in front of him.

He’s right about this one, Dean sees that, but that doesn’t change the fact that Dean has blood on his hands, that he reeks of it, that he’ll never be clean. His heartbeat is thundering in his chest and all he wants to do is run, all he wants to do is throw his head back and howl because the freedom he was reveling in minutes before is nothing but an illusion.

The walls are of memory now instead of stone and metal. Instead of the weight of the earth over his head, there’s an ocean of blood to drown him. But he’s just as trapped as he was in the Arena, conscience keeping him bent over and on his knees and nose-deep in blood.

He’ll never be free. Never.


	3. Ritual

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set three months after Children of Oak.

They try it once.

There are two of them, after all, and they’re stupidly, foolishly confident they can rip apart any demon that tries to interrupt the summons.

Keith’s a volunteer—a hunter who came to them, who asked and then pleaded to join them, to become one with his own andi. Keith’s a bit of an asshole, as far as Sam’s concerned—or maybe that’s just because Keith stares at Dean with naked hero worship in his eyes, and the expression is too close to hunger for Sam’s peace of mind. And he doesn’t like the way Dean is so easy with the guy, like he’s no threat at all, like he’s already one of them.

But that doesn’t mean Sam wanted it to go like this, with demons sweeping down on them in a thick, black cloud as soon as the ritual is finished.

He and Dean do what they can, but there are too many of the bastards, and even without bodies they leave Dean bloodied and staggering. Sam’s dripping as well, but he doesn’t really feel his own wounds—he and the cougar are too focused on Deanmate, on the thick cloud converging on him, trying to lift him away.

 ** _Lilith,_** Sam hears on the wind. _**Lilith wants.**_

He forgets about Keith then—forgets everything but grabbing Dean and knocking him out _(Dean’s still struggling to stay and fight, the idiot)_ and running with his mate in his arms until they hit consecrated ground.

Cheated of their prize, the demons don’t even bother possessing Keith. When Sam goes back later, the hunter is spread all across the clearing, and the groundcover has gone black with dried blood.

They don’t try the ritual again.


	4. Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about three years before Children of the Oak.

Monsters are real.

Annabeth knew that even before the monster came into her room and snatched her from her bed in the night. It smelled dirty, like old food, and she screamed as loud as she could for her daddy but it took her anyway, holding her tight and carrying her away into the woods where no one will be able to find her.

Monsters eat little girls, and Annabeth knows that too: didn’t have to see it eat Tina _(Murray, from down the street)_ to know that. But she saw it anyway, mostly through her fingers, as the monster dragged Tina away from the wall and into the middle of the room and ate her until there wasn’t anything left but bloody rags.

There are three of them left here now, all taken from their beds, and Annabeth knows that they’re all going to die like Tina. She’s scared—wants her daddy—but she doesn’t want to wait around either _(no one is coming to save them because this isn’t a fairy tale or a bedtime story, it’s real)_ so the next time the monster comes she makes herself step in front of the others.

She still screams when it grabs her, when she feels its hot breath on her skin. Tina screamed too, loud and shrill, and how the sound of those screams had made Annabeth cry ...

There’s a loud crash and the monster releases her. Annabeth isn’t expecting it and she falls back onto her behind, which hurts and makes her let out a startled cry. Then there are new hands on her, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her back to the wall. She opens her eyes and looks up into a frightening face.

It’s more frightening than the other monster, because this face looks human and almost kind. This monster has hair, and a nose and ears and teeth, and it’s dressed just like a human too. Except this has to be a monster because it has glowing gold eyes, and Annabeth is only five but she’s old enough to know people don’t have eyes like that.

“Don’t look, sweetheart,” the monster says, covering her eyes with one of its hands.

There are noises coming from behind it—terrible sounds—and Annabeth starts to cry because she’s sure that this new monster is going to be even worse than the first. Except the monster puts an arm around her back, and rubs between her shoulders the way Daddy always does, and makes shushing noises.

“Shh. It’s okay, you’re safe, honey. We’ve got you.”

Behind it, the noises stop. Annabeth isn’t sure what that means, but it can’t be anything good. She cries harder.

“Dude, what did you do? Tell her one of your stupid dog jokes?”

“She’s scared, Dean,” the monster holding her snaps. “You’d be scared too if—”

“Yeah, yeah. Get the other munchkins out, would you? I’ll chill with Annabeth for a minute.”

Annabeth’s head comes up at the sound of her name—how do they know? Can they read her mind?—and she sees that the second monster looks much like the first. He’s prettier, though: almost like a doll. And his hair is shorter. He blinks down at her and the gold in his eyes goes out.

Annabeth is a big girl, so she knows that doesn’t mean anything except that he’s like the Big Bad Wolf and can wear sheep’s clothing, but she’s still just five years old and she doesn’t have any super powers. If these monsters want to eat her like the other one, then they will and there’s nothing she can do about it.

The first monster passes her up to the second, who makes a shelf out of his arms for her to sit on. She starts to tumble back and grabs his neck instinctively.

“Hey there, sweetheart,” the monster says, smiling at her. “My name’s Dean. What’s yours?”

She sniffles, shaking her head. “You already know, too. I heard you!”

The monster’s mouth twitches. “Caught me. Your mommy and daddy sent me and my brother to come save you. We’re going to take you home now, okay?”

“You aren’t going to eat me?” she whispers, hardly daring to believe it. “Like the other monster ate Tina?”

The monster’s expression goes stiff and sad the way Mommy and Daddy’s do sometimes when they’re watching the news. “You see that, honey? Did you see the monster eat Tina?”

She nods, relaxing her hold on his neck long enough to wipe her nose on the back of her arm.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, using his free hand to smooth back her hair. “I wish you hadn’t had to go through that.”

“But you’re a monster,” Annabeth says, confused. “Monsters aren’t sorry.”

“Sometimes they are,” the monster answers softly. He sounds sad, which is also strange and makes Annabeth feel a little guilty, because as far as monsters go this one is actually pretty nice.

“Did I make you sad?” Annabeth asks.

The monster smiles at her, but it looks fake the way Daddy’s does when he’s in the office and his boss stops by to talk. Annabeth thinks the monster’s face looked nicer before.

“No, kiddo,” he says. “You didn’t.”

“What did then?”

But the monster just ruffles her hair and starts walking toward the door. “We better get you home,” he says gruffly. “Your mom and dad’ll be worried about you.”

Monsters are real, and Annabeth knows that now for sure. But as this monster carries her out to a big black car and puts her into the backseat with the two other little girls, Annabeth learns another thing about monsters.

Sometimes, they’re the good guys.


	5. Prayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Arena, month one.

Dean learns to pray on his knees, which isn’t all that unusual, but he guesses that good old JC didn’t mean to be taken quite so literally on the ‘drink of my blood’ routine, so that part is just as fucked as everything else is these days.

His first prayer—made while he’s chained in place with one of Hank’s hands keeping his head tilted back and the other forcing his mouth open—is that he’ll wake up and find that this whole, sick set-up is just a nightmare. That the warm liquid being poured down his throat is some sort of hallucination.

His second, which comes moments after Hank releases him so that he can bow forward and retch his stomach empty again, is that the perverted bastards got this shit from some unlucky lamb or pig.

“Shh,” Vincent’s cool, silky voice soothes from Dean’s left.

Dean would jerk away from the hand the man rests on his sweat-soaked hair, but his body is still too torn between puking and gasping for breath to do anything but endure the caress.

“Easy, now,” Vincent adds.

Somehow, Dean manages to spit, “Fuck you,” between dry heaves.

Vincent crouches, fingers threading through Dean’s hair in a way that reminds him unpleasantly of last night’s client, and then says, “I’m not doing this to be cruel, Dean. But I can’t have my Fenrir looking squeamish every time he gets a little blood in his mouth. That sort of thing isn’t good for business.”

Dean’s breath is coming easier now that his diaphragm has stopped spasming, and he’s able to grunt, “Sorry I’m bringing down your ticket sales.” Then, with a wide grin firmly in place, he twists his head to the side and looks up at Vincent. “Guess you’ll just have to put a bullet in my head and cut your losses.”

“Amusing notion, but I don’t think that will be necessary,” Vincent muses as he straightens and steps away.

Dean tenses as Hank gets hold of his head again. Blunt fingers dig into his skull and draw his face back up. Dean tries to keep his mouth shut, but the sadistic son of a bitch just jabs his thumb and forefingers into the hinges of Dean’s jaw and parts his teeth for him—just like last time, and the time before that. As Dean sucks in quick, panicked breaths through his nose, he watches a nameless guard carry a large bowl toward him, red sloshing over the side to mix with the mess already on the floor.

“You’ve been marvelously adaptive so far,” Vincent notes.

Dean shuts his eyes as the guard tips the bowl and more of that disgusting, coppery liquid spills into him, coating his tongue and lining his throat. Some of it goes down his chin, washing over his throat and bare chest in a warm, queasy flow. His stomach rebels immediately this time, trying to send the liquid back out as quickly as it’s being poured in, and the resulting confusion locks up his throat muscles and makes him choke.

“Hank.”

The hand gripping Dean’s hair lets go immediately, although the hold Hank has on Dean’s jaw is firm enough to keep his head where they want it. A second later, Dean’s throat is being stroked in clumsy demand. It’s fucking surreal, being treated like some kind of animal getting force-fed a pill, but Dean can’t laugh because it’s working. The stroking is sending the firm, no-nonsense message that his convulsing throat is craving right now.

Revolting as the knowledge of what he’s doing is, Dean’s coughing eases out and he swallows.

“Good. Just like that, Dean.”

Dean shudders, trying to distance himself from this moment the way he sometimes gets to go away in his head when he’s ass-up in bed. His body’s complaining too loudly for him to manage the trick right now, though: stomach lurching alarmingly, warm and full, and muscles trembling—the stress and the strain of fighting to get away, to free himself. As though he can manage much resistance at all with the elephant tranquillizer Hank shot him up with still flooding his system and warded manacles cuffing both his hands and ankles to the floor.

Red pours into him. It seems to overflow his stomach, rising up into his lungs and then flooding higher. It gets into his brain, seeping through his skull and soaking everything with sickening copper.

Finally, after what feels like hours, the restraining hands release Dean and he bends over again. Shakes weakly as he brings it all back up. The puddle of rejected liquid has bled down to where he’s kneeling on the stone floor, but Dean doesn’t care. He's already tacky with the overflow, and anyway kneeling in the shit isn’t anywhere near as bad as trying to swallow it.

“Give him a couple more bowls and then hose him off and get him ready to fight. If he hasn’t adapted by then, we’ll continue the training tomorrow.”

Vincent’s hand lands on his head again: a casual, possessive touch that Dean doesn’t quite dare shake off.

“If I were you,” Vincent cautions him, “I’d acquire a tolerance for the taste soon. I’m going to run out of would-be berserkers eventually, and then I’ll have to resort to importing a fresh supply off the streets. Such a messy, unpleasant proposition, don’t you think?”

Dean’s sob is mostly concealed in the last few choking heaves that wrack his body, but he’s sure Vincent hears it anyway.


	6. Haunt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Countless years after the first Demon War.

Ellie knows she shouldn’t be out here, but her run-in with that skinslipper left her nursing a wound in her upper thigh that’s soaking her pant leg and filling the air with copper. Not the best scent to be putting out after the sun’s gone down. Not in the Wilds, anyway.

So she has no choice but to take to the dubious shelter of the forest—at least there’s cover here, and plenty of wood to build up a fire. Get some hot food into her belly, sear the wound clean and comfort her heart all in one fell swoop. The Chessa love a good fire, or so the Singers say, and Ellie’s inclined to think they have good taste.

The fire seems to calm Palla, too. The horse doesn’t like these woods—too many predators out there in the dark—but the whites of her eyes aren’t showing so much as Ellie bites down on a spare bit of branch and sews her leg shut with a dried-out bit of sheep gut.

Good. Ellie’s in no condition to go haring off after Palla if the damn horse gets it into her head to panic.

Once she’s done tending to her wound as best as she’s able—at least until she gets back to the outfit she’s hunting with tomorrow afternoon—Ellie takes the skillet and some of the cured meat out of her provisions sack and starts cooking up her dinner.

She becomes aware of them only when they’re seated on the other side of the fire—two man-shapes. They’re tall—she can tell that even with them both hunkered down the way they are—but other features are difficult to make out in the flickering light. Older, she thinks, though. Somewhere in that midland between thirty and forty, with the brush of age frosting their temples grey.

Ellie tries ignoring them—some haunts’ll go away if you look through them like they ain’t there—and one of the man-shapes says, “Bit far for you to be out by yourself.”

It isn’t a question, and Ellie carefully avoids asking one herself as she answers, “I’m with an outfit out of New Chicag.” She doesn’t look at her weapons sachel, but she’s thinking about it, oh yes she is.

The other man-shape—the taller of the two, the one who hasn’t spoken up yet—starts at that and says, “Then you’re moving West again.”

“Looks like.”

“Are you resettling?” he pursues—a question, which means that if these’re the right kind of haunts it means Ellie’s got the upper hand—and Ellie’s feeling generous enough to give a fuller answer.

“It’s getting crowded back East. There’s too many hands stirring the same pot with too many spoons. Besides, it’s been a long time since a haunt army came out of these parts. Could be they all killed each other off. Could be the Chessa got ‘em.”

“The Chessa?” the shorter man-shape echoes, mouth twisting in a way that signals amusement. “Really?”

“Dean,” the taller man-shape cautions.

Dean ( _names have power; Ellie latches onto his immediately_ ) snorts. “No, I’m sorry, Sam, but that one takes the cake.” Then, leaning across the fire, the haunt fixes Ellie with his eyes and says, “It’s Winchester. _Win._ Ches. _Ter_.” Shaking his head, he sits back again. “Seriously, what is it with people and shortening shit? You’d think with all the times we’ve pulled their collective asses out of the fire, they’d at least have the courtesy to remember the whole thing.”

Ellie’s skin runs cold. “You ain’t,” she insists. “The Chessa are—”

“Ten feet tall and breathe fire and yadda yadda yadda,” Dean interrupts. “Yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, sweetheart, but what you see is what you get.”

“ _Dean_.”

“Dude, what?”

Ellie knew she shouldn’t have come near this woods. It’s too old of a place, and there are too many things living in it. Dangerous things.

Things that pretend to godhood.

Still, they haven’t tried attacking her yet, and Dean seems ... well, more annoyed, than threatening. Ellie’s got nieces who are more ferocious.

“Ignore him,” Sam says, offering Ellie a smile that actually looks pretty nice.

Not that she’s going to trust it, since some of the nastier haunts out there can charm the pants off you before getting down to business and spreading your guts on the floor.

“We’ve been out of touch for a while and, uh, re-entry is always a little rough on him.”

“Speak for yourself. What did they call you last time? Oh yeah—Sammiah. Pretty clever how they took ‘Sam’ and ‘messiah’ and mashed ‘em together. Although not quite as funny as that time—”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Sam continues, speaking loudly to drown out his companion. “I know it’s difficult to believe, but we’re them. The, uh, Chessa, I guess. And if you’re going to be moving back out this way, then we’re going to need to talk to whoever’s in charge. We’ve thinned out the worst of the demons, but there’s still a lot of nasty stuff running around.”

“Hell is one persistent bitch,” Dean grunts, nodding. “But you’ve got about a thousand years before they punch another hole in the prison. If they stick to the usual schedule, that is.”

“Uh. Huh,” Ellie manages, wondering whether these two are actually insane or if she just looks like that easy of a mark.

Then they’re rising, and Ellie damn near pulls her stitches out trying to get up and over to her weapons before they attack her. Hands are on her almost immediately, though, easing her back down to the ground, and she looks up to find Dean standing over her. Fast. Whatever they are, they’re fast.

Dean’s expression flickers as their eyes meet—recognition—and even as she tries to wrench herself free from his hands, he looks away from her toward his companion and says, “Hey, Sammy, she look familiar to you?”

“Yeah,” the other haunt agrees. “Ellen’s line.” Then, turning his attention on Ellie, he asks, “Is your last name still Harvelle?”

She freezes, heart pounding. No one knows that. No one but Ellie’s mama and her grandma. That’s too dangerous of a name to have, these days, with so many roosters strutting around the barnyard of civilization and trying on the titles of lord and master. Harvelle is old royalty, rising strong from the Lilian War and ruling alongside other, select bloodlines during the long, blessed years of peace before the dark, burning times came again, bringing hoards of skinslippers with them.

“H-how did you—”

“Cause we are who we say we are,” Dean answers, and then gives her arm a quick squeeze that Ellie guesses is meant as reassurance. It doesn’t reassure, though, because she’s too busy considering the possibility that it’s true. If it is—if even half the stories are within spitting distance of fact ...

 _God-touched,_ Ellie thinks dazedly. _I’ve been God-touched._

She has a feeling her life just got a whole lot more interesting.


	7. Possession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about a year after Children of the Oak.

Dean’s in a mood; Sam can smell it from a mile away.

Not that he has to, since his mate has been glued to his side practically since the sun came up.

It’s distracting, that tangy scent—almost like vinegar—and Sam keeps suggesting Dean go lie down, or run the perimeter, or even check how Bonnie’s doing with the kids, but it only makes Dean glower and stick closer than ever. Which makes it really, really difficult to teach the new recruits hand-to-hand combat.

Finally, Sam gives in to the inevitable and uses Dean as a sparring partner to illustrate the moves they’re going over. It works for a couple of minutes, and then Dean starts speeding up, which makes Sam hurry his own motions to match his mate’s, which in turn sends Dean’s reflexes racing, and pretty soon all the recruits are seeing is a blur.

Sam steps back as soon as he realizes what’s happened, pulling out of the match, and then finds himself crashing into a tree halfway across the farmhouse when Dean is a little too slow in pulling his last punch. Although from the unconcerned way his mate is jogging over to him, it wasn’t exactly a mistake.

“What the hell, dude?” Sam mutters under his breath as Dean hauls him up. It’s the first time they’ve both been far enough from an audience to chance the question. He isn’t sure Dean will answer even now, of course, but it’s worth a shot.

But Dean only growls, “Ditch the puppies and follow me,” before loping off toward the farmhouse.

Sam has half a mind to make his mate wait—Dean’s behaving like an asshole—but the cougar reminds Sam that things have been hard for Dean lately, and that Sam hasn’t exactly been paying as much attention to him as he should, what with all of the new recruits running around and demanding his attention, and he ends up running after his mate without even bothering to dismiss the would-be hunters.

They’ve been here long enough that Dean’s scent coats the very earth—mingled with Sam’s: makes the farm smell like home—but it isn’t difficult to follow the most recent trail because it’s overlaid with that same bitter, vinegar scent. Sam traces his mate up to the room they share—wide windows, to let in as much of the sun and the moon as possible, to give Dean that extra reassurance that he isn’t getting shut up anywhere ever again—and finds himself shoved against the wall as soon as he steps inside. Dean’s mouth is on his in the next instant, hungry and demanding, and Sam would be all for it if his mate weren’t still giving off that smell.

Turning his head to the side, he gasps, “And I repeat, what the hell?”

“Shut up,” Dean rumbles, already diving back in for another kiss.

This one is fierce enough to draw blood, and Sam winces when his mate pulls away. Dean looks at him steadily, questioning and intent all at once, and for a moment Sam’s too distracted by how beautiful his mate is to figure out what Dean’s asking. Then he realizes that his mate’s scent has changed, shedding that vinegar tang and deepening into something musky and thick.

They don’t do this often—Sam thinks mostly because Dean still thinks he has something to prove to himself—but it isn’t exactly unheard of, and Sam is in no way averse to letting his mate drive. Neither is the cougar, which has begun to purr with contentment inside of him.

Sam isn’t sure which of them tilts his head up, but Dean takes the movement for the assent it is and darts in to bite hungry bruises into his throat. Sam has a moment to remember he should have taken his shirt off before giving the high sign and then the cotton is being torn from his body as Dean drags him toward the bed. His pants are shredded too, which is even more annoying because Sam _liked_ those jeans, damn it.

He supposes he should be happy that they’re at least using the bed—the last time his mate got into this mood, Sam ended up getting fucked against a tree in broad daylight. Sam ran past the place a couple of days ago on perimeter patrol and there are still furrows gouged into the trunk from Dean’s fingers—or maybe that was both of them: Sam’s not really sure what he was doing with his hands at the time.

“Ours,” Dean growls now, and Sam can hear Geri in the word as well, just as hungrily possessive as his other half.

But no matter how driven Dean is when he gets like this, he still takes his time prepping Sam, shoving his head between Sam’s legs and using tongue and lips and fingers. It’s shocking, blissful intensity, and before long Sam is panting and sweat-drenched. His muscles are tight, his hands clutching the metal slats in the headboard. They had the thing handmade by a smith, but Sam can feel the metal warping beneath his hands and forces himself to ease up.

Dean lifts his head then, responding to some kind of inner clock only he and Geri are aware of, and lunges up Sam’s body to reclaim his mouth. Sam spreads his legs to make more room between them and kisses back until Dean decides he’s had enough and breaks the kiss.

“Tell us,” Dean demands, Geri still riding strong within him. Sam can almost see the twinned soul in his mate’s eyes.

Even in his distracted state, he knows what’s expected of him—Dean won’t do this without verbal, crystal clear permission—and he immediately answers, “Fuck me.”

It’s nothing but rutting then, both of them breathing hard and leaving claiming fingerprints and mouth-shaped bruises and both trying to outfuck the other. Sam gets one leg up over Dean’s hip, which has Dean hitting him just right inside, and then concentrates on tightening up so that Dean makes guttural, startled noises and loses his rhythm.

“Mate,” Sam breathes, wrapping one hand in Dean’s hair, and Dean’s eyes squeeze shut as he shudders and comes. Sam rolls them before his mate has finished climaxing, easing off of Dean’s twitching cock and then pushing in himself.

Dean is lax with his orgasm, and they spent most of last night in bed, but he’s still blissfully tight and Sam only manages a couple of thrusts before finishing himself. He collapses on top of his mate without pulling out and lies there, waiting for his heart to stop racing. Inside of Sam, the cougar stretches out with a blissful, contented purr and is still.

Sam gives them all a couple of minutes and then asks, “Wanna tell me what that was all about?”

Dean shifts beneath him, looking evasive and a little embarrassed. “What, like we need a reason now?”

“You smelled like vinegar,” Sam points out, nuzzling at his mate’s cheek.

“Yeah, well, you’re no bouquet of roses yourself, sweetheart.”

The words are all joke and bravado—lying by evasion—and Sam fixes him with a stern look. “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it.”

Dean grimaces at that, glancing away. “Can’t you just accept the fact that we had some pretty fantastic sex and drop it?”

“Is that all it was?”

Sam doesn’t think Dean’s going to give him a straight answer at all, despite the fact that they agreed not to lie to each other _(the thing with Gleipnir and Lilith totally doesn’t count, that’s for Dean’s own good)_ , but then Dean’s face twists into a petulant expression that can only come from one place.

“Saw with stupid red bitch,” Geri answers. “Touched you. Not hers. _Ours_.”

Dean blinks and the wolf is gone, buried again. With a grimace of mingled embarrassment and annoyance, he grumbles, “Way to maintain a unified front, fur butt.”

“You were jealous?” Sam says, surprised. “Of _Helen_? Helen with the husband and the third trimester pregnancy? _That_ Helen?”

The sulky lines around Dean’s mouth deepen. “Shut up,” he mutters. “You do it all the time.”

“Do not!”

“Oh, please,” Dean scoffs. “Like I can’t smell it on you. And let me tell you, Sammy: it smells a heck of a lot worse than vinegar.”

Sam flushes a little at that, wondering just how much stronger his own possessive streak is, and then the cougar noses its way forward and licks along Dean’s jaw.

“To Ragnarok’s Door and beyond,” it breathes. “We will love you. Even when _you_ smell of wet dog.”

Sam laughs silently inside his head as Dean blinks, looking more like owl than canine.

“Was that supposed to be a joke?” Dean asks when he has recovered.

With a husky little laugh, the cougar slinks back down.

“Because we didn’t think that was very funny,” Dean continues. “I mean, we’ve got a ton of cat jokes, but you don’t see us using them, do you?”

Sam’s expression apparently isn’t contrite enough because Dean’s eyes narrow and he says, “Okay, fine. You want to play dirty, let’s go. Why don’t cats play poker in the jungle? Too many cheetahs. What do you call a cat that swallowed a duck? A duck-filled-fatty-puss. Why did the cat run from the tree? Because it was afraid of the ba—”

Still laughing, Sam kisses his mate and shuts him up.


	8. Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about four days after Dean's arrival at the Arena.

Hank’s training is pretty thorough, ranging from kissing to all manner of things Dean never even thought were anatomically possible. There’s only one hole in his education—although a damned gaping one, if you ask Dean. Considering what these sick fucks want him to do. And he can tell that Hank wants to, the way the fucker keeps going on about it while he makes Dean come all over himself again and again.

But then Vincent comes in when they’re washing Dean off and explains about Dean’s ‘final exam’, and everything is suddenly crystal clear. Seems like there’s a lot of money for that kind of thing, in certain markets. And Vincent, Dean is already starting to understand, knows how to find all of those.

It shouldn’t feel like much, not in comparison to what Dean has done over the last twenty-four hours since he agreed to play the gladiator _(Vincent doesn’t believe in wasting time)_ , but his stomach is still twisting in on itself when Hank leads him to an ornately furnished suite and leaves him there to wait.

There are no chains here like there were with Hank, nothing removing the weight of responsibility from Dean’s shoulders. There are no drugs to dull his senses or make him want it or take the edge off his fear. There’s only him, and the over-loud beating of his own heart, and his thoughts of Sam.

How easily Sam could be taken. How easily he could be hurt.

When the client comes in—Dean’s first, the man who paid over a half a million dollars for this privilege—he makes himself smile. He doesn’t fight when the man strips him. Doesn’t resist as he’s led into the bedroom. But he can’t bring himself to meet his client’s eyes, and everything he says comes out mumbled and awkward, which only makes him more anxious because he’s fucking this up despite his best intentions.

He’s already been violated more ways than he can count, already proved what a fucking slut he is, and Vincent is going to send for Sam anyway.

But the client seems to like the blushing virgin act because he laughs, and puts his hands all over Dean’s body until Dean is shaking with the effort of not punching the sick fuck’s face in, and then finally—fucking finally—tells him to lie down on his back and spread his legs. Dean bites the inside of his cheek bloody, but he obeys, lying there stiff and unyielding as stone despite the fact that Hank has illustrated more than once that it hurts more when he clenches up. He means to shut his eyes and think of something else—anything else—but the client’s hand grips his chin harshly when he tries it.

“No,” the man says. “I want you to look at me. I want to see everything you’re feeling.”

Dean thinks he might throw up all over both of them—and won’t that be a mood-breaker—but he takes a shaky breath and steels himself and keeps his eyes open. He isn’t hiding anything, he knows—too fucking rattled to even remember what his walls look like, let alone cower behind them—but it doesn’t matter. And anyway, this is what the guy wants—what the client demands to be kept happy. It isn’t a big deal, in the scheme of things, and Dean reminds himself of that fact as he feels the first, nauseating push.

After all, he’s already sacrificed so many things for Sammy over the years.

What’s one more?


	9. Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the Lilian War.

He comes to Ellen when she’s breathless with laughter, just having begged off another dance with Cal Rimmer, who’s making quite the nuisance of himself. Man’s chasing after her like she isn’t old enough to be his damned mother, like he shouldn’t be sniffing in Jo’s direction instead. Jo isn’t helping, either, laughing behind her hand whenever Ellen finds herself besieged.

Christ, she’s too old to be starting over again. Too long in the tooth to give the man the family he obviously wants, even if she is tempted by his smiles and his courteous, flattering talk. Even if she is watching with a shade of bitter jealousy as Cal tugs Deirdra King into the warm glow of the torches when Sam appears unexpectedly at her side.

She thinks it’s Sam, anyway. It’s difficult to tell the difference between him and the Other with the flickering light of the torches making the planes of his face foreign and strange. Fire seems to catch in those gold eyes of his and burns there, a living thing. It dances through his dark hair, shifting as the breeze blows the first, faint touches of autumn past them.

He looks like the god some folk are already calling him.

Ellen cranes her neck, looking for Dean—the Winchesters haven’t been more than a few feet from each other since the final, victorious battle they’re celebrating now, but there’s no sign of him. Doesn’t mean he isn’t there, though, lingering just beyond the fringe of the light and holding himself statue-still in the darkness. She’s been caught unawares often enough, and that was before what that damn fool Joey Ward’s been calling the Ascension.

Not that Ellen can come up with another word to describe that moment when a hot wind swept the battlefield. Ain’t a term invented for the golden flare that lit up the sky before settling beneath Dean’s bloodied skin.

As she pushes away memories of the violent, unsteady emotions that shook her in that moment, Ellen can’t decide if the electric tension that comes with suspecting Dean’s presence is worse than actually seeing what he’s become these days. Thank God he’s been as skittish with most folks as they’ve been with him.

If skittish is the word for how most folks feel about the Winchesters after the show they put on at Gehenna Ridge.

When she turns back, Sam is looking at her— _Sam_ , it’s definitely Sam and not the Other sharing space inside him—and Ellen knows immediately from the expression on his face what he’s come to tell her.

“You’re leaving,” she says, unable to keep the complicated mix of emotions—relief, sorrow, guilt, anger—from her voice.

“War’s over,” Sam answers. His own voice is still scratchy and rough, although there’s nothing but a thick line of scar tissue across his throat to mark the gaping wound that Ellen was sure would end him. He doesn’t sound as scratchy or rough as he did this morning, though, and she has the uncanny feeling that within a few days’ time—a week, at most—no one would be able to tell he’d even been hurt. That ridge of scar tissue is going to fade right back into his skin like it wasn’t ever there in the first place.

She thinks of Dean again ( _one touch, just a brush of his hand_ ) and can’t quite resist a shiver.

“Lilith’s gone,” Sam adds, like Ellen didn’t see that for herself. Like she didn’t watch with horrified, breathless awe as Dean turned from Sam’s still, pale form and dealt that death blow at Gehenna.

“That don’t mean you shouldn’t stay,” she argues, careful to keep her words quiet even if her tone is hot with reproof. Sam waited to approach until she was away from the crowd and on her own for a reason, after all. If he’d wanted this discussion public, he’d have spoken up earlier, during Bobby’s post-victory speech. “There’s work to be done here. It’s a new world, Sam. Old government’s gone for good, what people’ve seen, and they’re gonna need—”

“What, kings? _Gods?_ ” Sam interrupts, and Ellen can’t help shifting uneasily at the reminder of her own earlier thoughts. There’s a knowing glint in his eyes, a humorous twist to his mouth as he shakes his head. “You don’t need that. What you need is to stand on your own feet.”

“Winter’s coming on,” Ellen replies, taking a different tack even though there’s a part of her whispering frantically that she should just let this happen. Much as it shames her to think it, she’d sleep easier at night without knowing Dean was so close. “Folk need someone to unite behind, get ‘em all marching in the same direction.”

“Sure they do,” Sam agrees, but he’s regarding her with too much weight to his gaze, and she jerks as she understands what he means.

“Me?”

“Why not you?”

“Because… well, _because_ , all right?” There’s too much of a humoring, superior edge to Sam’s smile—a cat’s expression if Ellen ever saw one—and she frowns, snapping, “We need you two. Lilith’s gone, sure, but that don’t mean there aren’t demons out there looking to take her place. Or werewolves, or ghosts, or all manner of dark thing that’s been stirred up by this damned war.”

“So train your people. You’ve got enough veterans on hand to take care of what’s needed short term. Long term, new recruits will learn to take up the slack.”

“You two are worth a hundred of us.” It’s a conservative estimate, but good enough for Ellen’s purposes here. “And what Dean could do—”

“He’s done enough,” Sam cuts in. The abrupt ice in his tone freezes the breath in Ellen’s throat and she takes a single, jerky step backward—instinctive fear rushing through her, stirred to life by the predator’s hostile eyes regarding her from Sam’s face. Almost immediately, she catches herself, and the shame that follows on her fear’s heels has nothing to do with her rabbitish response and everything to do with her demands.

Sam’s right. Dean has given enough. More than enough, really.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes. “That was thoughtless of me.” As the threat of violence in Sam’s eyes and posture eases, Ellen draws a hand through her hair and lets out a shaky breath. “It’s just going to take some getting used to, not being able to rely on you boys.”

Sam actually smiles again at that—because, Ellen thinks, she and Bobby and Bonnie are the only ones who still refer to them that way, who even really remember that they used to be human beneath all of that strange, wonderful power—and the expression gives her enough courage to repeat, “Stay. Not to do anything, just. You’ve got friends here, Sam. Family.”

“I know,” Sam says, sobering. “But I’ve got family out there, too.”

He nods towards the darkness and this time, when Ellen follows his nod, she seems a glimmer of movement.

“Dean,” she says, the name slipping out before she can catch it behind her teeth.

Might be whispers from some calling Sam a god, but she’s heard more than whispers about his brother. She’s seen enough herself to have her own doubts about just how much of the boy she remembers is still in there. Christ, she hates how uncomfortable that makes her. How her insides prickle and thrill at the mere possibility of him.

“He wants to say goodbye,” Sam tells her, and Ellen’s first impulse is to call out for help. Her second is to run, as though she’d ever make it as far as the field they’re using as a dance floor.

Casting one final look at Jo’s laughing face—her baby girl clapping along to the music and belting out bawdy lyrics with the other hunters sharing her bench—Ellen lets Sam grip her arm. He leads her away from the joyous celebration—soldier and hunter and civilian alike crying out their thanks to the universe, grateful to be alive still, here on the other side of the End Days. He leads her out of the light and into the shadows.

It doesn’t take long for her eyes to adjust enough to make out Dean’s form. Sam’s brother is moving with a wolf’s restless wariness just a few steps outside of the wood’s edge. Ready to disappear inside at a moment’s notice if need be.

As though he has anything to fear, except, perhaps, himself.

From the anxiety Dean is radiating, Ellen doubts that it was his idea to say goodbye. He doesn’t run as they draw close to him, though. Doesn’t look at her, either, stilling warily with his face turned away and his body poised on the edge of flight. As though he couldn’t burn her to ash and bone with a touch.

He isn’t what she expected, John’s eldest. Never is.

Dean’s obvious apprehension softens the sharpest edges of Ellen’s fear, and she manages a smile. “Hey, Dean.”

“Ellen,” Dean replies without looking at her.

Ellen hasn’t heard his voice since Gehenna—not since that final, enraged scream of pain he gave in the moment before ( _ascension_ ) the sky lit itself on fire. It’s just a whisper now, the barest push of breath past his lips, but there’s power in it all the same, ancient and terrible, and Ellen’s knees buckle with the force of it. Her own breath punches out from her body and her head spins as she flushes hot and cold, muscles trembling. The grass feels sharp and cold against her right palm.

It’s been a while since she’s lain with a man, but that’s the closest Ellen can come to describing the sensation in her head.

“Jesus,” she pants, trying to ground herself.

There’s a rustle of movement to her left and then Sam is crouched in front of her, rubbing the back of her neck gently with one hand.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I should have warned you.”

“Is that,” she gasps, and then has to stop and gather her scattered wits before asking, “What is that?”

“Odin’s Breath,” Sam answers, which doesn’t tell her anything at all. Or maybe it does, at that.

“Is it…” She can’t ask. Maybe doesn’t want to.

But Sam answers her anyway.

“It’s not permanent. It just takes a while to wear off.”

Ellen’s not sure if she’s relieved by that or saddened, but either way she lifts her head and looks for Dean again, filled with the indescribably painful yearning to see, to bask in his presence. It’s a dangerous feeling, and one that makes her glad they’ve decided to go.

As he is now, Dean could tell folk to walk themselves right into the ocean and they’d do it, every last one. They’d go into the dark, suffocating water and be glad to obey.

But, for now, he isn’t anywhere to be seen—gone off into the woods, perhaps, or just melted into the night—and Ellen’s body gives an involuntary, mourning shiver as she drops her head again.

“How is he?” she asks, unable to look Sam in the eyes for the question. “Really?”

Ellen has seen him off and on over the last two days, of course—mostly off, and mostly she’s been thankful for that—but this is the closest she’s been since he kissed her cheek in apology and ran his fool self off to the devil’s doorstep, and that was months ago. Feels like years. She isn’t exactly in a position to assess him.

Sam’s hand on her neck stills and, for a long moment, he’s silent. Then he says, “It comes and goes. When he’s like this, it’s… I don’t even know how to reach him. I can’t imagine what it’s like. He—Ellen, he sees everything, hears everything. It’s like he’s operating on a different plane than everyone else.”

“Sounds about business as usual for you two to me,” Ellen mutters, although she gets what he’s trying to say.

Sam huffs a shaky laugh and then says, “Last night, I caught him standing outside in the middle of the camp and staring up at the sky. Naked. He said the stars were singing to him. When I woke up this morning, he was gone again. I found him in the middle of the river. The water was flowing _around_ him, Ellen. He wasn’t—didn’t have a drop on him when he walked out. I asked him what he thought he was doing, and he said he couldn’t hear the Earth over the water, so he asked it to move.”

 _Jesus_ , Ellen thinks. The thought of the river, of the things Dean could do with that sort of power, is too much for her poor, human mind to handle and she focuses instead on the thought of him standing in the midst of all of the tents in nothing but his birthday suit. She’s grateful Sam found his brother before anyone else stumbled outside to answer nature’s call. Can’t even begin to imagine the riot of needy worship that would have resulted otherwise.

Sam’s voice trembles as he continues, “But he doesn’t—he doesn’t hurt when he’s like this. It’s like he knows what happened, but it can’t touch him.”

He falls silent then, and Ellen doesn’t ask what the other times are like—those moments when Odin’s Breath loosens its grip and leaves Dean something closer to mortal and earthbound. She doesn’t ask because she knows some of what he’s been through, and even that little is enough to make her chest ache and her eyes water.

“You boys shouldn’t be alone,” she whispers, reaching up a hand and lightly touching Sam’s face. It breaks her heart to think of them out in the wide, war-torn world together. Striding past abandoned, broken cities. Running through vacant wilderness. “ _Stay._ You’ve have done so much for us. Let us do just a little for you.”

The muscles of Sam’s face move against her palm, and when she lifts her eyes, she finds him smiling.

“We won’t be alone,” he says, and for an instant it isn’t him looking at her. It’s something else, something more. Then the Other is gone and Sam is back, his golden eyes shadowed and aching, but warmed by something else—something deep and strong that Ellen can tell runs through his entire being.

Faith.

“And we’ll be back,” Sam adds. “When Dean’s ready.”

It’s a promise Ellen doesn’t want to repeat but knows she will. When folks notice the Winchesters’ absence, she’ll call a meeting and tell them about this moment—this vow. And she knows that it’ll change in the telling, taking on some sort of mystical dimension for those left behind. Those waiting here on the edge of a strange, new world.

Sam helps her stand then, lifting her and holding her hands with a gentle smile that almost makes her forget the way he looked when he was ripping demons apart in an effort to get to Dean’s side. There’s a rustle of grass and a warm body presses up against her from behind. Hands slide into place over her stomach before shifting—one lifting to cover her heart, the other dipping lower to rest against her abdomen.

Ellen stiffens, her heart pounding hummingbird fast in her chest and her eyes wide on Sam’s face. She can smell something—something wild and free and strong—as Dean’s cheek—rough with stubble but otherwise unmarred: his right, then—rubs against hers.

“Goodbye.”

Dean’s farewell runs through Ellen’s blood like heat lightning, and on her gasp there’s a second, stronger wave that steals her voice and closes her throat completely. Colors and light flare in her eyes as her muscles thrum, alternately tensing and releasing and leaving her at the mercy of Dean’s hold because Sam has stepped away, watching from somewhere on the other side of a supernova.

When the world calms again some time later ( _or maybe it’s only been a few moments, Ellen has no way of knowing_ ), Dean carefully lays her down on the grass. He kneels beside her, brushing her hair back from her face. The field of stars rising behind him seems to spin, but Ellen is too focused on his face to pay much attention to them.

She hasn’t gotten a good look at him since the battle, not so close and frank as this. Couldn’t really get a good look then. Couldn’t stand to look. But she stares openly now, head spinning and thoughts distant, as though she’s been hypnotized.

Even in the darkness, Ellen can tell that the furrows running through Dean’s left cheek and brow are white and closed instead of pink and raw. His right eye glitters golden. When last she saw him on the battlefield, there was nothing but an angry, empty socket where his left eye should have been. In the camp, these last few days, he’s been hiding the wound with a patch some of the younger folk are already imitating.

But the patch is gone now, and instead of an empty socket, Ellen finds herself staring into an eye as black as the sky above. An eye that possesses its own distant, glittering field of stars.

It’s breathtaking, such unexpected beauty amidst a scarred ruin, but Ellen understands that this won’t last either. The strangeness of Dean’s new eye will fade with the power—the thing Sam called Odin’s Breath. And as it fades, Dean will heal just as completely as his brother. He’ll stand on this ground in ten year’s time, or twenty, and he’ll look just the same as he did when he and Sam strolled into the middle of a tactics meeting at her bar all those years ago and upset the damned applecart all to hell.

Graceful and unscarred. Confident. Uncaring of the bristling guns and knives that untrusting hunters pointed his way.

Dean smiles at her, and Ellen’s head whirls. Her skin prickles with aftershocks. She wants to demand to know what he just did, and what gave him the goddamned right, but there’s nothing human in either of his eyes. Nothing reachable.

It isn’t Dean she’s looking at right now. Not really. She might as well try yelling at the sun.

She blinks and Dean is gone—quick as that. No warning, no sound of his passage through the ground cover of last year’s leaves. Sam is by her side a moment later, helping Ellen sit up with an apologetic expression. She notes that he isn’t actually apologizing, though, and there’s something in his attitude that says he knew this was going to happen when he urged her over here.

“Sunna bitch,” she manages through lips that feel clumsy and numb. “Wha’d do t’me?”

“Dean sees two boys and a girl, in case you’re wondering,” Sam says instead of answering, and then immediately adds, “You don’t have to do anything with it if you don’t want to, of course, and you don’t need to decide now. You’ve got a good thirty years before you need to figure out if you want to do anything about it, I’d say. Maybe forty.”

Something about the way he’s looking at her clicks in her ringing head and Ellen reaches up to brush her face with tingling fingertips. It feels unfamiliar, smooth and soft like it hasn’t been since she was a baby herself, no older than Jo is now, and the wondering, icy shudder that races through her this time has nothing to do with the lingering effects of Dean’s touch.

“Oh my god,” she whispers, stomach swooping. She looks down at her hands—firm skin, unlined; even the damned scar she gave herself when she nicked her thumb with a knife at thirty-four is gone—and says it again, louder. “Oh my _god_.”

“He wanted to thank you,” Sam says. “For taking care of me.”

There’s more than a trace of rueful embarrassment in his expression now, and Ellen can tell that’s a message he wishes he didn’t have to pass on. But now that her shock is starting to wear off a little, she understands Dean’s gratitude, even if she’s still grappling with the form it’s taken. It took everything she had to keep Sam sane and whole during those months Dean spent himself as a distraction. Those long, torturous weeks he folded himself up nice and close by Lilith’s side and waited for his moment to strike.

Months they all thought him dead.

But she wasn’t the only one who kept Sam in one piece, kept him from killing himself through grief.

“Bobby?” she checks. “Bonnie?”

“Slowly recovering,” Sam admits. “It, uh. It takes a little getting used to, apparently, but you should be well enough to call a meeting in the morning. Bobby will know what to say.”

He’s not quite meeting her eyes, though, and Ellen realizes with a jolt that Sam didn’t just allow this because he felt they were in her debt.

“You son of a bitch,” she says, speaking with more ease now. “You set us up.”

“Someone has to lead, Ellen,” he replies unapologetically. “You said it yourself. Call me a cynic if you want, but I wanted a little assurance it’d be the people who should be in charge.”

“I ain’t playing high priestess to you two.”

Sam grins at that, the expression reminding her strongly of the tiny boy she first met years ago, when she was… well, when she was older than she is now, feels like.

Oh Christ, there’ll be no fending Cal off at all now that all of her excuses have been stripped away.

“Talk to Bobby and Bonnie,” Sam advises. “You’ll be fine.”

Ellen wants to berate him a little more—she can see the practicality in what he and his brother are doing, but that doesn’t mean she’s thrilled to have been shoved forward as one of the chosen few—but Sam is looking over his shoulder now, tense and alert as though listening to an inaudible call. Inaudible to mortal ears, that is.

When he looks back at her, his expression is set and already miles distant.

Instead of wasting her breath on grumbled accusations he won’t hear, Ellen says, “You take care of each other.”

“Of course.”

“And come back as soon as you can,” she adds.

Sam smiles without answering that demand, although she supposes his expression is answer enough. And his promise.

“Fare you well, Ellenmotherqueen.”

That isn’t Sam speaking, Ellen knows from the deeper register of his voice, but it’s Sam who kisses her lightly on the forehead before rising and loping away into the dark. She stares after them for a long while, listening to the celebration behind her and readjusting to the new feel of her body.

Gods, folks are starting to whisper amongst themselves, and after tomorrow, they won’t just be whispering it.

After tonight, Ellen isn’t all that sure they’ll be wrong.


	10. Myth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roughly concurrent with Omen.

There are times when Lilith wishes she could just skip all this Armageddon crap and get to the good stuff. Other times when she looks at the world through a hazy sheen of red and marvels that she ever could have considered checking out before the end. Lucifer made her, which means she owes him a lot, but really, self-sacrifice just isn’t her cup of tea. She has better things to do with her life. More entertaining things.

And now that she knows there’s another pretty, pretty pet to be had, chances of her putting her head on the chopping block for the Morning Star are pretty much nil.

The world is Lilith’s, the apocalypse is her show, and she’s running it however she damn well pleases. And doing a bang up job of it, if she does say so herself.

Which means she gets to have a treat.

She makes herself wait through the rest of the war council first—they have demon cells in every major city now, not to mention alliances with most of the sentient creatures crawling across the surface of the earth—and then leaves the rest of the details up to Alistair _(not her first choice for general, but if she can’t have Sam Winchester she’ll make do)_ and strolls down to the basement.

The apartment complex they took over has been completely reworked inside, with special attention paid to the basement. Alistair complains constantly about the lack of resources and space, but he’s done a wonderful job with the place. Lilith is looking forward to seeing him implement his plans to convert an amusement park into a suitable facility for other, pleasanter delights, but she has no problems practicing here in the meantime.

After all, she has to perfect her technique before her pretty pet gets here.

The humans in the cells by the stairs cower when she strolls in. They aren’t as frightened as they are when Alistair or one of the others comes down to play, though: they know by now that she has her own, private playpen in at the far end of the torture chamber. No reason to waste time with small fry.

Lilith’s borrowed heart races as she nears her playpen—she can hear her canine companions growing excited at her approach. They’re cute little puppies, brought here especially at her request because puppies sound so much nicer when she gets tired of asking them to “fetch” and “roll over” and begins to strip the flesh from their bones. In a second cage to the left of the puppies, her boys wait on her pleasure: three strong, young men in the prime of life. They’re nice enough specimens for now, but she’s seen footage of her pretty pet and they don’t even begin to compare.

“Here, puppy puppy puppy,” she coos as she draws to a stop by the cages.

The puppies wag their tails and yip and struggle to get closer to her—she makes it a point to never put one back into the cage once she’s played with it: she likes them trusting and frolicking when they begin. Two of the men lift their heads and regard her with wide, frightened eyes. The third continues to drool quietly in the corner, which means she’s broken another one and will have to have it disposed of. Alistair will be annoyed—this is the third one so far this week, and werewolves aren’t easy to come by.

These new hybrids are much more durable than the regular werewolves she was contenting herself with at first—she really does owe Vincent Camargo a fruit basket for figuring that one out—but it’s still like playing basketball with a glass sphere. The silly boys break so easily.

Lilith’s pretty pet won’t shatter, though. Not this time. Not now that she has Gleipnir to make him behave so she won't lose her temper and do something she shouldn't. This time, he’ll be hers to keep and caress and play with forever.

She hums to herself as she thinks of her pretty pet with Gleipnir tight around his pretty, pretty throat. He’ll sleep at the foot of her bed, so he can be close at hand if she wants him in the morning or during the night. He’ll have his own set of shiny, razor sharp toys for when they play—Alistair is making them special as a coming home present.

When she wants it, he’ll fill her up and take her nice and hard the way she likes. When she’s in the mood to watch, he’ll play the bitch for her generals. Maybe she’ll even stud him out. It might be interesting, after all, to see what a half-demon, half-meat mongrel child would look like.

Gleipnir will make all of that possible.

Opening the safe by the wall, she reaches in and strokes her fingertips over the shining collars that turn myth to reality. There are two of them—a matched pair. One smaller, meant to fit around a beast’s throat: one larger and built for a man’s. Beautiful, enchanted metal that flows together to lock into place with no seam or catch, and which only unlocks again if given the whispered command by the same hand that closed it tight in the first place.

When Lilith has her pretty pet, she won’t have reason to ever remove the collar again, but there’s no reason to leave it on her practice pets—especially not when extended wearing usually leaves them gibbering and mindless, which makes them no use to her at all. But they aren’t true meat mongrels—only some twisted, lesser perversion—and Lilith has been assured that her pretty pet will remain cognizant and healthy. Eventually, he might even adapt and come to like the things that Gleipnir can do.

For a moment, she considers the smaller collar—that she will shift from throat to throat, starting with something small and crippled until the naughty andi has been fully tamed. Then maybe some puppies, harmless and clumsy, before moving on to larger dogs.

Eventually, once she's sure of the mutt's loyalty, she'll find it a nice timber wolf for a home. It will be lovely to bring the pair of them hunting once the war has really gotten underway: to watch her pretty pets rip into angel and human alike at her whispered command.

But that’s for the future. Right now, she just needs a temporary fix: something to sate her while she waits.

Reverently, Lilith lifts the larger collar from the safe and holds it up. As she regards the gleaming metal, she wonders if her pretty pet got her message. If he’s as excited to be hers as she is to own him.

Smiling sweetly, she trails Gleipnir across the bars of the hybrid werewolves’ cell. Her two sane pets scramble back against the wall, sweating and shaken by the sight of it. Even the third, broken pet makes a despairing noise in the back of his throat—perhaps some small part of him remembers the last time he wore the collar for her pleasure.

“Who wants to go for walkies?” Lilith singsongs as she unlocks the cell and opens the door.

Inside, her pets turn their faces away and begin to weep.


	11. Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roughly concurrent with Purgatory.

“Sammymate,” Geri breathes wistfully. Still holding tightly to the trunk of the tree with one hand, it leans Dean’s body further out into space, feet perfectly balanced on the thick branch beneath them. The dizzying drop below rouses Dean from his apathy for a moment, and he looks outward with Geri toward the farm spread out in the distance. Picks Sam out easily from among the rest, scattered figures working their way through hand-to-hand combat drills.

But Geri isn’t going to let them fall, and after a moment, he slips inward again, and back.

 

 _Billington has dogs—five Dobermans with free reign of the grounds—but when Dean snaps his fingers and gives them a look, they sink to the earth obediently. One of them, bolder than the others, belly crawls forward and whimpers until Dean crouches and offers it the back of his hand. The Doberman’s tongue comes out, licks tentatively at his skin. Its tail thumps._

 _“Good doggie,” Dean murmurs, giving it a soft caress behind the ears._

 _The Doberman’s tail moves faster, and the other dogs, emboldened by their pack mate’s success, also slink in. Dean gives himself a few minutes with them, letting them see he isn’t going to hurt them any more than they’re going to hurt him. Inside of him, Geri enjoys the moment as well: two packs meeting in the night._

 _As Dean scratches beneath one of the Doberman’s jaws, he announces, “I’m going to kill your master.”_

 _The dog makes a soft whuffing sound and licks his wrist._

 

This time, it’s a scent that pulls him out. Something fresh and clean on the air. Brother and mate and Sam and a heavier, bitter edge that tells Dean he’s being missed, that Sam is lonely.

Geri still has them high in the tree, watching.

“Wants us,” Geri says, plaintive.

Dean can smell as much for himself, and there’s a part of him that wants Sam back just as badly, wants to drop down from the tree and sprint the three miles or so to Sam’s side and tumble him into the ground in greeting.

Instead he slips back within.

 

 _Billington is fast asleep, but he comes awake all at once when Dean drops down on top of him. The man starts, flailing out and shouting for ‘Brian’, who must be one of the two guards Dean killed downstairs. Both necks snapped quietly and efficiently: wouldn’t do to get blood on the carpet._

 _Dean lets the son of a bitch hit him once or twice and then catches his wrists, pinning them against the mattress in an effortless hold. He settles his weight more firmly on the man’s waist, deliberately not thinking about the fact that he’s been fucked in this position more than once. There are layers of clothes between them, and anyway, Dean doesn’t have to do that anymore._

 _“W-what do you want?” Billington blubbers once he figures out Brian isn’t running to the rescue. He’s trying to put on a brave face, Dean’ll give him credit for that at least._

 _“You were in Chicago last week,” he says softly._

 _“The car?” Billington says, frowning. “This—this is about the Mercedes?”_

 _“You really think I give a shit that you bought yourself another set of wheels?” Dean demands, tightening his grip enough that Billington shouts in pain._

 _“What?” the man cries. “I don’t—I don’t know what you want. Money? I can give you money. It’s—the safe—combination is—”_

 _“I was just letting you know where your luck ran out._ Daddy. _”_

 _The man shuts up and goes still, comprehension filling his face even as he peers up into the darkness of the room. “Who are you?” he whispers._

 _“I’m the ghost of fucks past, you son of a bitch.”_

 _“Ryan?” Billington guesses._

 _Dean’s stomach rolls at the faceless name and he wishes, briefly, that Geri were here to help him through this. But he made the wolf promise before he went inside that it would hide. Hide and not come out until Dean called for it._

 _Geri’s going to nose through the memories after, but Dean doesn’t want it here for this. He doesn’t want it tainted by what he’s about to do._

 _“Eddie?” Billington tries again. “Zach?”_

 _“How many names is it gonna take for you to work through them all?” Dean spits. This time, when he grips he feels bones snap._

 _Billington screams, tears streaming down his face, as he yells, “My wrists! You broke my wrists!”_

 _Dean covers the man’s mouth with one hand—not that he’s worried about neighbors or police interrupting: Billington liked his privacy too much for that to be an issue—and says, “You won’t know my name. You never bothered to ask. But I think you’ll remember Vincent Camargo’s.”_

 _Billington’s eyes go wide beneath Dean’s muting hand, and he sucks in a breath that Dean knows has nothing to do with the pain in his wrists. He feels a sick stab of satisfaction in his gut at the recognition and eases his hand away, ready to slap it back in place if Billington starts screaming the house down again._

 _Instead, the man pants, “Fenrir. I heard—you’re dead. They said—Kasparak said you were—”_

 _“You asked about me?” Dean’s sideswiped by the news, and the nauseous pain wracking his gut increases. His mouth has gone sour and too hot. Rage and panic and the press of memories send minute, hopefully unnoticeable tremors through his body. He forces the weakening sickness away almost immediately, focusing on the anger as he bites out, “Thought I was too old for you, you sick fuck.”_

 _Billington sags back against the bed, and he still looks scared, but he isn’t scared enough. There’s too much resignation and acceptance in his eyes. Maybe he always knew he’d end like this: one of his victims coming home to roost._

 _“I wanted to see you with one of my boys,” he says now, voice dull. He has to know he’s signing his own death warrant, but he doesn’t stutter. Doesn’t sound apologetic or regretful._

 _Dean’s too busy trying not to throw up on himself at the thought of having to fulfill that particular fantasy to care._

 _“It would have been beautiful,” Billington breathes, expression wistful beneath the pain. “I like beautiful things.”_

 _For a moment, Dean’s too horrified to speak. Then, as Billington starts to harden beneath him_ (sick son of a bitch: makes Dean’s skin crawl just touching him) _, he forces his emotions to one side and embraces the cold, vicious core of himself. The place he used to live when Vincent locked him inside the arena. When he tightens his grip again, grinding the broken bones of Billington’s wrists together, he feels nothing but joy at the man’s hurt cry._

 _“Lucky for you then,” Dean purrs. “I hear it’s real pretty this time of year in Hell.”_

 

Geri pulls him out this time, with a questioning prod.

 _Yeah,_ Dean answers silently. _I’m here._ He comes forward enough to feel the roughness of the bark against his palm, but doesn’t try to regain control of the body they share. He hasn’t wanted to feel it since he dragged himself, muscles aching from exertion and skin slick with blood, from Billington’s estate.

“Deanmemine go home now?” Geri asks.

Sam’s scent is still strong on the air, and Dean’s chest aches with how much he needs to be wrapped in his mate’s arms, but he turns his face away.

Billington was a monster. A pedophile. A rapist with enough money to indulge his tastes with no fear of reprisal.

He needed to be put down.

But Dean can’t fool himself into thinking that justice and safety were his only motives, that it wasn’t the thought of what Billington would have made _(did make)_ Dean do that drove him to spend eight hours taking care of the son of a bitch. He is the monster Vincent made him.

“No,” Geri says, sending waves of comfort and unconditional love through him. “Keep pack safe. Nastysickness needs to be driven out. For good of pack. Deanmemine good.”

“It didn’t have to be like that,” Dean argues, regaining control of his body and wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. Sam’s scent is even stronger now, driving through him in heavy, hungry waves, but Dean turns away and begins to climb back down to the ground.

Sensing his intent, Geri tries, **::Full moon soon. Gregpup needs Deanmemine.::**

“Sam can handle it,” Dean responds, sprinting away from the farm as soon as his feet hit the earth.

Because he wants to see his mate, but he isn’t ready. Billington is too close, clinging to Dean’s skin like the ghost Dean claimed he was, and Sam will see the man if he looks into Dean’s eyes. Sam will see what Dean did and he’ll get that hangdog look on his face and that ruffling, sad smell, like wasted dreams and spoiled hopes, and Dean can’t stand it when Sam gets like that.

He’ll go back when he has this under control. When he’s ringed the ghost round with iron and salt and has it hidden away.

 **::Silentlies not good,::** Geri announces.

 _Who asked your opinion?_ Dean shoots back, and lengthens his stride as he lopes away from the farm. He runs fast, runs to race the wind.

But there’s a leaden, aching feeling inside of his chest because he knows that he can’t ever outpace himself.


	12. Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set four months after Angels.

It’s only days this time instead of months. Six days, to be exact: one day shy of a full week.

Feels like a century.

Samcougar smell Dean from ten miles away, even through the masking scent of city—the thousand upon thousand odors and reeks and aromas that might have confused a weaker nose, or one not so wise. But Samcougar would know their mate anywhere, they know his particular musk, and they pick up his trail almost as soon as they enter the city limits.

The blood of the meatsuit they tore apart to get the name of this place is still fresh enough to smell where it spattered on their skin.

It’s night when they arrive, which makes it easier to move as quickly as they want, although they wouldn’t have slowed for the daylight. Let people see. Let the whole world look on and cringe away from Samcougarhunter. Let the lawkeeperspolicefools try to keep them from their destination. Samcougar will claw their way through stone and metal and flesh to reach _him_ , to keep him safe and theirs.

When Samcougar find the warehouse by the docks—the one with crates of rotting fish and leaky jars of vinegar and heavy tubs of gasoline piled high around, as though anything can mask Dean’s scent—they want to hurl themselves through one of the downstairs windows and rip the building apart. They’ve been hunting as one for days now, vision bled as red as their hands from the anger and frustration and fear threaded through this hunt, and it’s difficult for them to think with anything other than the deep, basic throb of instinct.

 _Mate,_ that throb says and, _Stole him,_ and now that they’re here and can distinguish it in Dean’s scent, _Hurt him._

Someone’s going to bleed for that.

But Samcougar are too wise, even in the throes of their fury, to dash blindly against an enemy that took and held their mate. Deanmate is crafty and swift and strong, and if Deanmate has not been able to escape on his own, it will take all of Samcougar’s cunning to bring him out. No, it will take all of Sam and Cougar’s cunning.

Separating comes with a jolt, like sprinting off the end of a moving walkway onto stationary ground. Sam rattles against his own skull as he comes away from the cougar, and the cougar’s disoriented yowl fills his ears. It _hurts_ , coming back to themselves like this—leaves Sam sore all over, and he can feel the ache mirrored in the cougar’s phantom body. His breath comes in harsh pants, and when he looks down at himself—crouched in the shadows by one of the fish crates in a position belonging more to a cat than a man—he finds his clothes stiff with old blood.

The cougar recovers first, gathering itself and moving Sam’s body into a more comfortable crouch. **::Deanmate,::** it hisses, tail lashing violently inside Sam’s head.

 _He’s alive,_ Sam thinks in reply. _Listen._

The cougar does, immediately latching onto the heart beating out of time with the others—too fast for human, although slower than Sam is used to hearing it. Drugged, maybe, or unconscious.

 **::Save Deanmate. Now. Kill walkingdeadthiefprey::**

The cougar’s broken speech pattern tells Sam that his other half is still mostly trapped in the berserker bloodfury that has gripped them both ever since they arrived home to find Greg and Max sitting in the half-finished kitchen with reddened eyes and nervous, guilty expressions. Just about the only thing Castiel has been good for in this disaster was keeping Sam from ripping those two apart when they told how they lost Dean—cause fuck knows the angel hasn’t been any help in _finding_ him.

But now Sam and the cougar _have_ found him, and Sam’s desire to get in there and reclaim his mate is dwarfed only by his desperation for the rescue attempt to work. For that he needs the cougar rational, though, and he’s only going to have that if he calms himself down first.

Sam has never been a huge fan of meditation, but he wishes he’d paid more attention to those yoga classes he took with Jess now, because a little inner peace would do wonders for his present situation. Without the help, it takes almost an hour of slow, steady breathing—an hour resisting the cougar’s snarling attempts to seize control and drive them both forward, an hour of ignoring the desperate hammering of his own heart—before he gets the results he needs.

When the cougar finally calms enough to demand, **::Why do we delay here?::** Sam’s sigh of relief is clearly audible.

 _Because we need a plan that’s going to work,_ he answers. _We can’t just charge in there guns blazing._

 **::We used the last of the ammunition days past,::** the cougar reminds him, and Sam grows uncomfortably aware of the manmade claws strapped to his hands. He curls his fingers into tighter fists, scraping bloodied metal on black flattop.

 _It’s an expression,_ he explains. _Charging in and getting ourselves killed isn’t going to help Dean. We need—_

 **::Slinkingstalkandpounce, yes. I will guide. You will lookforpreyseethroughdangerwatchfortraps and we will fall on them as owls on mice and take back Deanmate.::**

The final mental image accompanying the cougar’s words lingers in Sam’s mind like a prayer—he sees Dean back in their new bed at the freshly rebuilt farmhouse, sees himself wrapped around his mate and licking possession into his skin with steadying thoroughness. When this is all over, Sam is going to make that hope a reality as soon as possible; he’s going to make sure his scent is rubbed into Dean’s skin with such thoroughness it won’t ever come out.

But that’s for later. For now, he sends a pulse of agreement toward the cougar and cedes control, then watches from the backseat of his own head as the cougar darts them from crate to crate. There are guards on the roof, Sam notes—one for each side of the warehouse—and they’ll need to take those eyes away from the demons inside before they do anything else.

 **::How? They will see us before we make the climb. Not even a shadow can hide in the air::**

Sam’s heart sinks for a moment as he retakes control to turn his head, scanning the surrounding area for a solution, and then, slowly, he grins.

 _Oh, you are going to love this ..._

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The cougar calculates its pounce perfectly, sprinting across the roof of the neighboring building and launching Sam’s body across the intervening space. It’s easily 100 feet from rooftop to rooftop, and the demon is leaning over the western edge of the warehouse, looking down. It’s clearly not aware just how far Sam can hurl himself when he needs to, which makes perfect sense.

As far as Sam can tell, physical capabilities are unique from berserker to berserker. Although they’re both fast, Dean can outrun him ten times out of ten. He’s more maneuverable at high speeds as well—Sam has seen his mate completely switch directions in the middle of a dead sprint.

But Dean never could have made this jump.

Sam can and does and his momentum drives him into the demon hard enough to snap its neck and break most of its ribs. He’s up immediately, ready to rip the black-eyed son of a bitch out with his manmade claws, but the body beneath him is still. When the cougar leans in them in close for a sniff—difficult to focus on any scent but Dean’s—there’s no telltale demon reek.

The guards are human, then. Satan worshippers or hired thugs, it doesn’t matter. It just means the other three will be that much easier to kill.

Sam and the cougar take turns.

Sam slits the northern guard’s throat with the claws, loping onward again before the man’s body has finished its graceless fall. The cougar grabs the eastern guard’s mouth to keep him quiet, claws slicing deeply into his face, and disembowels him with Sam’s other hand. Together, they watch the man’s panicked, agonized eyes go dark and then drop him like so much trash and sprint toward the south. The fourth man dies with Sam’s hand in his chest, and then it’s quiet on the roof, almost peaceful.

There’s no guilt or pity in Sam’s heart for the dead around him. Human or not, they should have known better than to take what doesn’t belong to them. They should have known better than to take something that should never be caged.

The cougar moves to take them inside through the roof access door, but Sam delays long enough to give the fourth corpse a quick pat down. Sure enough, he finds a radio clipped to the man’s belt. It’s difficult to handle the walkie-talkie while wearing the claws, but Sam also finds a pistol—loaded with explosive rounds—and he takes another minute to change out weapons. They’re about to walk into a shitstorm blind, and Sam wants to be able to manipulate things with his fingers if he has to. The gun isn’t as comfortable of a weapon as the claws, but he still has a backup blade strapped to the inside of his wrist and another down his boot, and that’s going to have to be enough.

“Okay,” he says under his breath as he finishes looting the guard’s corpse. “Now we can go.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The warehouse becomes a dying ground.

Sam works his way down floor by floor, checking in every room and leaving nothing breathing in his wake. There are demons everywhere he turns now that he’s inside, but he’s had plenty of practice over the last six days ripping demons apart and these die just as easily as the others. Each disintegrating cloud of smoke makes the righteous fury in his chest burn hotter, until he feels almost frantic with adrenaline.

And that’s when he opens a door and finds himself on a catwalk high above the massive main room of the warehouse.

Dean’s scent crashes over him with the force of a tsunami, run through with the distressing smells of blood and urine and shit. And death. The room smells like death.

Every baser instinct Sam has is screaming at him to throw himself over the edge of the catwalk and kill everything in the room that isn’t his mate. Dean’s so close—he’s _right there_ —and Sam needs to have him back. Needs him _now_.

This time, it’s the cougar that latches onto Sam, stealing control of their shared body and keeping them still no matter how desperately Sam thrashes in his head.

 **::Think,::** it insists. **::There are too many below. We can not kill them all before they harmkilltake him.::**

It’s the thought of finishing his bloodletting only to turn and find Dean spirited away again that gets through to Sam, and he sags, relinquishing control. The cougar waits for a few wary moments, until it’s certain Sam isn’t going to send them both plummeting into space the instant its attention wavers, and then lowers their shared body into something halfway between a crawl and a slither. They move out onto the catwalk that way, ducked down so as not to be visible from below, and when they’ve gone far enough, the cougar chances a glance over the edge.

The room below them is huge, running almost the full length of the building and close to two football fields in width. In all of that immense space, though, the only piece of furniture cluttering up the floor is a rectangular wooden table. There’s a metal bowl of water sitting on the table—decorative paw prints running around the side, something a dog lover might buy for their pet poodle. Next to the bowl is a length of green rubber tubing, looking like a discarded snakeskin, and a bloodied scalpel. An open case containing syringes filled with sickeningly familiar glowing liquid—purple rather than blue or red, but Sam can guess its purpose easily enough. On the other side of the case, he spots someone’s half eaten sandwich—ham and cheese with mayo, if he’s reading the scent right. A cell phone. A walkie-talkie.

A few feet to the left of the table, there’s a metal cage that looks like it was made to hold a St. Bernard or a Newfoundland, and inside the cage is Dean.

Sam’s mate is lying on his side, protected from the metal bars on the bottom of the cage by a couple of white towels that have been laid out over the floor. His body is covered with bruises, not an inch left unbeaten—Sam knows because Dean’s naked, curled up in that cage like someone’s pet. Like Lilith’s pet.

And just as soon as Lilith agrees to the terms these sons of bitches are setting, that’s exactly what Dean’s going to be.

 **::No,::** the cougar hisses. **::Ours.::**

Sam’s in complete agreement with that sentiment. He’s just a little less certain how they’re going to go about proving that to the thirty-odd men, women and demons lounging around the cage.

 _Which one do you think is Ruby?_ he asks, glancing back and forth between the five women he can spot from up here. None of them match the ranger the demon was wearing the last time he saw her, but that’s to be expected. She wouldn’t have bothered to go in search of that body once she broke back out of Hell, after all.

 **::The strongest—here,::** the cougar answers, and directs their shared eyes toward an older man wearing a suit and tie.

It’s an unexpected fit, but then again, given what the other demons Sam has torn through over the last six days told him, unexpected is precisely what Ruby wants. Especially since the rebellion she’s been leading against Lilith ( _the other demons referred to Ruby as a ‘Lucifer-fanatic’, whatever that means_ ) hasn’t been going particularly well. If Ruby wants to keep her life after having pissed Lilith off so badly, she’s going to need a valuable bargaining chip.

She’s going to need Dean.

Sam should have killed the bitch when he had a chance.

He glares at her now—skin prickling as her meatsuit strolls toward the cage and crouches by the bars. She stays there for a moment, looking at Sam’s mate almost idly, and then pulls something out of her pocket and puts it to her lips.

Sam is lucky that he’s already mostly on his stomach because even from up here the sound of the whistle is like a spike being driven into his skull. He hisses, hands shooting up to cup his ears protectively, and watches Dean do the same in the cage. The noise only lasts for a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity, and Sam’s ears are still ringing as the echoes fade. The sound of laughter rising up from below comes to him distantly, as though he’s listening to it through a wad of cotton.

“Rise and shine,” Ruby calls as she tucks what has to be a dog whistle back into her pocket.

“Morning already? Gee, guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.” Dean’s voice is weak, but Sam’s relieved to hear it—and the defiant thread of humor still running through it. Dean’s still fighting. It’s a good sign.

“So, what’s for breakfast?” Dean adds, slowly getting up to his hands and knees. Sam can see his brother’s arms and legs trembling from here. “Steak? Ham and cheese omelet?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, baby, but you’re going to have to wait a few more hours for num nums. I just wanted to give you another chance to take your medicine like a good boy so that I can tell Lilith what an obedient puppy you’ve been for me.”

There’s a beat of silence where Sam gets to digest the way Dean’s scent has run through with the sour reek of fear and then his mate bites out, “Go fuck yourself.”

Ruby sighs, although her disappointment is clearly feigned. “It pains me to have to do this,” she says, lifting one hand and snapping her fingers. Some of the other men detach themselves from the surrounding group, walking in to stand near the cage.

One of them grabs the strip of rubber and the scalpel as he moves past the table, and that’s when Sam notices the rust-brown stain spreading out across the concrete floor from one side of the cage. His stomach drops precipitously with understanding of what’s about to happen—of what he has to _let_ happen, if he’s going to have a chance to get Dean out of here, because there’s no way he and the cougar can take care of that many opponents at once.

The men surround Dean in a circle, staring down at the cage, and after a moment Sam can hear his mate’s breathing grow labored. Dean grunts between pants, his entire body shaking with the effort of resisting the demons’ combined power, but finally—slowly—his right arm creeps toward the bars of the cage. It takes a few minutes for the demons to force Dean’s arm where they want it—stretched out through the bars, hand clenched into a fist—and then Ruby holds her hand out for the scalpel.

“I could make this good for you if you’d just cooperate,” she offers, twirling the blade casually from hand to hand. Sam’s lips draw back from his teeth in an unconscious snarl.

“Not—not my type—buddy.”

“For you, sweetheart, I’d put on a girl,” Ruby purrs as she drags the tip of the scalpel along Dean’s forearm—she isn’t pressing hard enough to cut, not yet, but Sam’s well aware that won’t last long.

“You think—Lilith’s gonna be—happy—if she—finds out you’ve been—sampling the—the merchandise?”

Ruby chuckles, tilting her head to one side and tapping Dean’s arm with the tiny blade. “I could dangle you in front of her with your dick in my cunt and she’d still deal for you. Don’t ask me why, but she’s gagging for you that much.”

“Good taste?” Dean suggests, and then growls as Ruby digs the point of the scalpel into his skin just below the bend of his elbow. The scent of fresh blood hits Sam’s nose even before he sees the shining drop of his mate’s blood fall from Dean’s arm onto the stain.

“So,” Ruby continues as though Dean never interrupted. “I figure I might as well get a little taste of my own in before I kiss that Judas’ dirty, betraying feet. That way, no matter how long I have to put up with that lying viper, I’ll always know that Lilith’s pet is nothing but my sloppy seconds. And so will you.”

“Hate to break it to you, buddy, but you’re a bit late for first dibs.”

“Oh, but I can be so much more creative than humans, don’t you think?”

Dean lets out a bitten off shout as she finally cuts him, drawing the scalpel slow and deep across the crook of his elbow. Blood patters out in a rain, forming a puddle that Ruby dabbles her fingers in and flicks at Dean’s face. Dean looks away, grimacing and biting his lower lip, and Sam watches as the muscles in his mate's forearm cord and relax and then tense again with rhythmic regularity.

That’s not Dean’s doing, Sam is sure, but the demons’—each flex of Dean's muscles drives a faster spurt of blood from the cut until there’s at least a couple pints slicking the floor and staining the edge of the towels on the floor of the cage.

Finally, Ruby holds out her hand again and exchanges the scalpel for the rubber tubing and ties it off to form a tourniquet, stopping the flow. After that, the demons turn away. Without their restraining power, Dean immediately collapses onto his side, arm still stuck out through the bars at an awkward angle.

Ruby makes a tsking sound with her tongue and pushes his arm back inside the cage. “Aw, is someone tuckered out?”

“ ... son of ... bitch ...” Dean manages faintly.

“Aw, sweetheart—you say the nicest things,” Ruby answers, and then stands, gesturing to one of the other demons. “All right, finish him up.”

Sam watches helplessly as the cage door is opened and Dean is dragged out on the towels. His mate takes a swipe at the demons hauling him into the open, but he’s too weak from the blood loss for it to be anything more than a pathetic slap, easily ignored. Dean is rolled onto the concrete floor then, limbs flopping loosely, before being pushed onto his back so that one of the demons can wipe down his arm with the bloodied towels.

“Fuckin’ ... kill ... kill all you ...” Dean mumbles, trying to get up and managing to prop himself on one elbow, head hanging low and forehead brushing the floor.

The demon holding the dirty towels laughs and kicks him in the ribs, hard enough to flip him over onto his back again. Dean groans, lying still while fresh towels are laid down in the cage.

“You know, Dean,” Ruby comments, coming over to crouch next to him. “You’re not so bad. It’s your brother I’ve got a bone to pick with. After all, it’s Sam’s fault we’re in this mess instead of ripping apart the earth by Lucifer’s side the way we should be.”

Ruby strokes Dean’s hair and then, when he tosses his head weakly, laughs and does it again.

“Think I’ll tape our time together and send him a copy,” Ruby announces. “You think he’d like that?”

Dean spits at her.

“Now, now. That’s not polite. Bad puppy.” The violence of Ruby’s punch is at odds with her mildly scolding voice and Sam hears a crack that’s probably Dean’s cheekbone going. When Ruby’s body shifts a moment later, he can see the left side of Dean’s face swelling. There’s blood on his mate’s lips.

In the midst of all of his rage and horror, it’s that slight dribble blood of blood that makes Sam pause. Dean should be healing faster than this—shouldn’t be able to bruise at all, and sure as hell not as badly as he looks down there. And he should be smelling Sam the same way Sam’s smelling him—should know help is near, should be trying to sneak looks and spot his rescuer. Part of what’s wrong with him must stem from weakness caused by the repeated blood lettings, but not even that should be—

Sam’s mouth twists in revulsion as he watches Ruby leave Dean there, disoriented and drooling blood, and take a syringe from the case on the table. Of course Dean’s body isn’t working the way it’s supposed to—not only have they been keeping him weak; they’re keeping him drugged too. Unable to cause trouble.

Even so, by the time Ruby returns to Dean’s side a moment later, he’s recovered enough to recognize the syringe and flop over on his stomach in an attempt to crawl away. Ruby takes several moments to watch him with an amused, mocking expression and then takes two steps forward and rests her foot between his shoulder blades. Pushes down, easily forcing him to the floor.

“No,” Dean grunts.

“You going to be a good dog and drink on your own, then?” Ruby asks, snapping her fingers and pointing at two of her demons. One of them trots out of the room while the other takes the bowl of water and puts it on the floor by Dean’s head. Sam’s stomach turns as Ruby takes her foot from Dean’s back, allowing him to push up onto his hands and knees. He’s shaky, trembling all over, and Sam can tell from the way he’s looking at the bowl that he wants to throw it in Ruby’s face.

So can Ruby.

“Careful,” she warns. “Spill it again and we’ll find an easier way to do this. I don’t think you’d like having a tube shoved down your throat, but it’s your call.”

After a brief delay, Dean leans forward and laps awkwardly at the water. Sam can taste the humiliation tainting his mate’s scent, sees it tensing Dean’s muscles.

He has already decided that no one’s walking out of here alive, but in that moment Sam understands that he’s going to take his time about it.

Inside of Sam’s head, the cougar yowls for its own share of blood, but that sound is drowned out by another: a girl’s frantic screams. Dean has gone even tenser below, fingers curling into fists against the floor as he lifts his head. Bloodied water dribbles from his chin, but more distressing than that is what Sam can see of his mate’s eyes, which are as desolate as he’s ever seen them. Dean’s scent has gone acidic, soured by disgust and despair.

The girl that the returning demon brings with it is thrown to the ground next to Dean. She’s up again in an instant, trying to run, but the demons have closed into another circle and an invisible sphere of power keeps her by Dean’s side. Just outside of the circle, Ruby taps her finger on the syringe.

“So, are you going to finish your drink on your own, or do we need to bring your smarter half out?” she asks.

There’s a split second of disconnect before Sam gets it.

The demons have been continually spilling Dean’s blood onto the floor—bleeding him over and over to keep him weak and manageable—but he needs some sort of nourishment between lettings if they want to avoid killing him. Blood out, blood in.

It makes perfect sense, if you’re a demon.

God, Sam _hopes_ it’s only blood that the demons have been forcing down his brother’s throat.

“I won’t,” Dean rasps as Sam’s stomach turns. “Go ahead and stick me, cause that’s the only way you’re gonna get what you want, you sadistic son of a bitch.”

This time, the demons don’t bother with their powers. Three of them move into the circle at Ruby’s silent command, two grabbing hold of Dean and one taking the girl. She’s still screaming, tears streaking her face as she tries to squirm free, and Sam guesses she’s too panicked to hear Dean’s repeated, muttered “no”s and “fuck you”s as the other two demons catch hold of him—one gripping his head, the other restraining his body—and maneuver him up against the girl’s front. His mouth is shoved against the crying girl’s throat, then held there as Ruby approaches with the syringe.

 _We can’t let this happen,_ Sam thinks, horrified and a little shamed that it isn’t the girl he’s thinking of but his brother. He starts to rise, but the cougar smacks him flat with a stinging reprimand.

 **::If we attack now, they will kill us all.::**

 _But Dean and Geri—_

 **::Deanmate and little runner have been through this already,::** the cougar counters. **::And the human dies whether we attack or no—or do you not think killing her is the first thing the deathlessdark will do when they see us?::**

But that’s exactly what would happen, and Sam knows it. The demon holding the girl would snap her neck at the slightest sign of rescue, just because it can. And then they’d kill Sam as well, and Dean would be stuck here.

 _Goddamn it,_ he thinks bitterly, shutting his eyes and shuddering as the girl’s screams go wet before cutting off.

It’s not Dean or Geri’s doing, he knows that—not if those vials contain Ragnarok or something like it the way he senses they do—but he doesn’t want the image of his mate savaging an innocent girl’s throat plastered all over his memories. Weak of him, he knows, when Dean has to live through it, but chances are Dean’s own memories of this are vague at best.

After all, he wouldn’t still be so defiant and unyielding if he remembered these deaths with any clarity.

When the noise has died down to a quiet, slurping sound, morbid curiosity gets the better of Sam and he cracks his eyes. The three demons have withdrawn, leaving Dean hunched over the girl’s body as he nuzzles her savaged throat, bloodying his own face and chest. Ruby is watching him with obvious enjoyment and not a little lust.

“It’s times like this that I get what Lilith sees in you,” she comments after a moment.

Dean’s head comes up at the sound of her voice and he gives her a brief warning growl before going back to feeding.

“I can’t wait to see what you’re like when she’s trained you to do this on command,” Ruby continues, although this time Dean ignores her. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To be set loose on a bus full of sweet little Catholic schoolgirls?”

On the table, the walkie-talkie goes off in a blur of static and Sam stiffens with a jolt of panic before flushing with relief. He remembered to turn off the walkie-talkie he took from the guard on the roof before he got down to these lower levels—too much chance of the damn thing giving him away.

“Ruby! Ruby, come in!”

Ruby scowls, clearly reluctant to move away from the show. Her stride is irritated as she moves over to the table, and her tone furious as she picks up the receiver and barks, “This better be good!”

“Something’s inside with us. The upper levels are—everyone’s dead up here.”

Sam flattens himself further against the catwalk, narrowing his eyes. Sounds like he missed one of Ruby’s sentries.

“Sam,” Ruby breathes, looking around the room. Sam tenses as her gaze moves over him, but her eyes continue on without stopping and a moment later Ruby is moving for the door. “Half of you, follow me. The rest of you, wash our pet off and put him back in his cage. High alert. If the cat shows, you have my permission to kill him.”

And just like that, the odds have dropped down to fifteen to one. Sam likes his chances.

Carefully and quietly, he crawls further along the catwalk until he’s just above Ruby’s little set-up. Using a combination of brute physical force and their powers, the demons have managed to get Dean away from the girl’s corpse and two of them are herding him over to one wall, where Sam notices there’s a length of coiled hose. He considers attacking now, while those two are separated from the rest of the demons, but he doesn’t like the thought that they could spirit Dean out of the room when he’s busy taking care of the others. Better by far if Dean is locked into his cage first, out of harm’s way.

Waiting these last few minutes is a special brand of torture. The water the demons spray Dean with is obviously freezing, and before long he’s a huddled, shaking lump on the floor. They’re laughing, and giving him stray kicks whenever they can dance in close enough—making a game out his delayed, pathetic attempts to fight back. And directly below him, Sam can see the dead girl’s eyes staring sightlessly up. Her throat has been torn away beneath Dean’s teeth—he can see all the way back to the glistening, knobby bones that make up the top of her spine.

Bad as all of that is, though, the sensation of time slipping through Sam’s fingers is worse—he has no idea how long Ruby and the others will be gone, and he needs to have Dean free and out of here before they return.

Later, when Dean’s recovered, the four of them can hunt the bitch down and make her pay for what she did here.

It takes hours, it seems, but finally the demons tire of their play. Their kicks become more pointed and herding, driving Dean back toward Sam—toward the cage—and after a few more infuriating minutes, Dean is shoved, snarling and snapping, into his prison. The door on the cage is closed and tightly locked.

 _Ready?_ Sam checks, and feels the cougar stretching inside of him and flexing its claws.

 **::Stalkingdeath from above,::** the cougar agrees.

Sam leaps.


	13. Omen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roughly two and a half years after Children of Oak.

“We could have sent someone else, you know,” Dean points out as they climb out of the car. “It isn’t as though we have time to check out every nickel and dime omen that pops up on the radar.”

“Mix a couple more metaphors next time, dude. I don’t think that was quite incomprehensible enough.”

Dean offers his mate the finger casually before checking to make sure his gun is easily accessible. He knocks his boot against one of the wheels on the way by, comforted by the press of the back-up blade nestled inside against his ankle. On the other side of the car, Sam’s performing his own check, and Dean frowns a little to himself. When they’re both nervous about a job, it never goes well.

 _Is that you guys?_ he asks. _Some kind of animal spirit psychic thing?_

 **::No,::** Geri answers. **::Can’t see future. Can only scent present. Smells like death.::**

“Yeah, cause we’re in a graveyard,” Dean mutters.

Well, they're standing out in front of one, to be exact, but that’s close enough. Two nights ago, someone saw an explosion of green fire here. Which, apparently, is some kind of obscure omen of the coming apocalypse. Like everything else these days.

Dean figures anything that feels the need to announce itself so much is overcompensating for something.

 **::Fresh death,::** Geri corrects, and of course now it registers for Dean as well: that thick, cloying scent of blood and shit and something deeper than that. A kind of silent, still smell.

Sam is scenting it too, Dean notices, because his mate pulls out one of the oversized, curved knives he prefers these days and hurries around the car to stand next to him. His eyes are restless on the rising hill on the other side of the iron fence, gold and glinting in the moonlight.

“Split up?” Dean asks. “You take the front, I’ll go in the back?”

That gets him a slightly angry glance and a, “Because that worked so well last time.”

“Not my fault you decided to stop and earn your Help A Granny Across the Street merit badge.”

Sam’s nostrils flare, which means that he’s really upset now, but the words are already out and besides, Dean can’t help joking when he’s nervous.

“Demons pushed the woman into the path of an oncoming _bus_ , Dean. What was I supposed to do, let it run her over?”

“Anyway,” Dean says smoothly, brushing past the incident, “Neither of us got dead, so it worked out fine in the end. Now can we figure out what to do before the sun comes up?”

Sam’s lips press together into a tight line and his brow furrows. He's probably frustrated because Dean got him all wound up and then cut him off with no real resolution to the argument. Which means he’ll likely still be wound up when they’re done here.

Which means Dean can totally take advantage of it.

Excellent.

“We go in from the side,” Sam says, and then before Dean can suggest otherwise, he adds, “Together.”

 **::Yes,::** Geri agrees.

“Furball’s for it,” Dean reports. “How about Garfield?”

This time the annoyance on Sam’s face is more dignified: almost haughty. “I have asked that you not call me that.”

“Yeah, that’s clearly getting you far. So, what do you say: split up or take the critter as a unit?”

“We’re not letting you out of our sight,” the cougar answers, which is an attitude that is getting to be par for the course lately. Between them, Sam and the cougar are worse than Dean imagines the most nagging, worrywart of a mother ever could be. He wants to argue that he can handle himself, but it isn’t worth the headache for something this small.

Although he’s definitely asserting his independence sometime soon. Just because he’s mated to Sam doesn’t mean he has to be shackled to his side.

“Fine,” he mutters. “But I’m taking point.”

He leaps the fence easily and immediately starts forward. There’s a muffled curse from behind him, and then a soft thud as Sam follows, and in the next moment Sam’s passing him. Dean speeds to put himself back in front, and a second later they crest the hill together and come to a dead stop.

In that moment, if anyone had wanted to take a shot at them, they would have been sitting ducks. Dean’s too stunned by the magnitude of the carnage spread out on the hilltop before him to even think of dodging, and he can tell by his mate’s scent that Sam’s having the same problem.

The ground is soaked with blood, black beneath the moon but red in Dean’s nose. Bodies lie piled between the gravestones, twisted and ripped apart and, in some cases, burnt. More bodies than Dean can count at a glance, but as the shock begins to wear off he estimates their number somewhere around a hundred.

No sign at all of what killed them.

“Fuck,” he breathes finally while Geri cringes and whimpers inside of him. “What happened?”

Beside him, Sam wordlessly shakes his head.

Dean stands there for a moment more and then, slowly, picks his way into the carnage, looking for the scent of something that could have caused this. It’s hard to smell anything but the death and the blood, though.

“Pretty recent,” he calls over his shoulder. “Couple of hours ago? Maybe less?”

And that’s when a hand grabs his wrist.

Dean jerks back, swearing, and trips on a body. He falls across a tumble of carcasses, which would be freaking him out if it weren’t for the fact that the hand is still holding on, gripping even tighter than before, in fact. And the hand is attached to a dead body.

“Dean!” Sam shouts, and Dean casts a startled glance over to find more of the bodies rising and throwing themselves at Sam. Not all of them, not by a long shot, but enough.

Ghouls. A whole pack of them.

“Dean Winchester,” the ghoul holding Dean says. Blood trickles from one corner of its mouth.

Dean was about to get up and rip the thing’s head off, but he freezes again at that—at the sound of his name. Geri cocks its head inside him as well: they both know that ghouls—Geri’s fleshdevourers—don’t usually pay that much attention to the living.

“Do I know you?” Dean asks. Off to the side, he can hear Sam getting into it with the others, but he doesn’t pay much attention: Sam can handle a couple of ghouls no sweat.

“No, but I was sent to give you a message.”

“Next time, try texting,” Dean shoots back, jerking his wrist free and staggering to his feet. “It’s faster and there’s a lower body count.”

“Oh, this was for fun,” the ghoul answers, spreading its arms. “And you wouldn’t deny us a final meal, would you?”

That makes Dean pause a second time, frowning, and he says, “You knew we were coming. You knew we’d kill you and you still ... What do you want?”

The ghoul’s face turns rapturous. “To serve her.”

“Serve who?” Dean checks, although he’s pretty sure he already knows.

“Lilith,” the ghoul breathes, and the confirmation sinks into Dean’s gut like a stone. Sam is _not_ going to like this. Dean hates demons too, of course, but Sam seems to have something personal against Lilith. Probably to do with those visions he used to have.

“Lilith,” Dean repeats. “She sent us a message.”

“She sent _you_ a message,” the ghoul corrects.

“It’s not a singing telegram, is it? Cause I gotta say, those are kinda embarrassing.”

“‘Tell the meat mongrel I have its leash and collar,’ she said,” the ghoul reports, ignoring the jibe. “Tell my pretty pet that the dog catcher is loosed and Gleipnir yearns for his throat.”

Dean washes cold, body locking up on him at the familiar name, but his own reaction is dwarfed by Geri’s. The wolf panics inside of him, whining and shivering and jerking around in short, distracting bursts. Dean can’t breathe. He can’t—

Sam is there suddenly, swinging his blade and cutting through the ghoul’s head with a single blow. He’s spattered in blood, and breathing hard. His eyes are wide and frightened as he turns, sheathing his knife as he goes and already reaching out to grip Dean’s arms.

“Dean. Dean, baby, are you okay?”

Dean tries to get his voice to work and can’t. He’s caught up in a loop of cringing fear and despair, and all of the knowledge that's coming to him from Geri in fits and starts is making him feel even worse about the whole Lilith and Gleipnir thing. Fuck, he never suspected it was anything but a myth.

“Geri?” Sam tries now. “Geri, talk to me.”

But Geri isn’t capable of responding any more than Dean, and after a moment Sam gives up on talking and hauls him in for a crushing, desperate hug.

“She can’t have you,” he breathes fiercely. “I promise I won’t let her take you.”

But Sam is covered with blood and he smells like death, and Dean can’t help feeling it’s an omen.


	14. Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is set about half an hour after Chapter Thirty Six of Fetters ("This Is How We Fit").

If you’d asked him a couple of years ago, Dean would have sworn up and down that he was never letting anything near his ass again. Geri was behind him on that one as well—the wolf wasn’t exactly conscious for all of the fun and exciting nights Dean got to spend bent over, but it has access to all of his memories, and it went nosing through them almost immediately once they were joined.

And didn’t _that_ kill the buzz of connection almost immediately during his shower—hearing the wolf whine and cringe while getting little starburst reminders of a past better left buried as the mutt shuffled things loose.

 _Leave it the fuck alone already,_ he snapped, pounding his fist against the side of the stall—quietly, so that Sam and the cougar _(leave it to Sam to summon up a cat, aloof bitch that he was)_ didn’t hear.

 **::Can’t,::** Geri whimpered, belly-sliding deeper into Dean’s head. **::Have to know. Have to see why want earth.::**

“Motherfucker,” Dean breathed, dropping to his knees as Geri accidentally stuck its nose into a real beaut of a memory. It wasn’t the best position to be in with that particular night rolling around in his head, and he forced himself back up with a more vehement curse.

 **::Sorry,::** Geri apologized, giving him a mental lick _(Christ, that was a weird sensation)_ , but Dean noticed it didn’t stop the little furball from worming in deeper.

He wasn’t going to be able to take this—not right now, not when he was so tired, not and maintain a strong front for Sam, who was waiting for him right outside the bathroom door. So it was basically out of self-defense that he grabbed hold of one of the worst memories _(not The Worst, he refused to think about that one anymore; it happened, it was done)_ and shoved it right under the wolf’s prying nose.

Geri let out a startled yelp and tumbled back, cringing and trembling with its tail between its legs. Dean would have felt like shit for scaring it if he weren’t reeling himself from the resonances—not just from his own mind, he realized after a moment, but from the wolf’s as well. Christ, he could feel the wolf’s fear and confusion and ... and yes, pain. As though he wasn’t the only one in that room. Wasn’t the only one on his hands and knees while some rich, sadistic fuck drew teasing circles on his back with a hook before ...

 **::No!::** Geri insisted, shoving itself between Dean and the memory. It was still shaking and letting out pitiful whimpers, but it was also licking him again and giving him mental nudges with its nose. Comforting warmth flowed into him, and after a few minutes Dean realized that he was shaking himself, hands curled so tightly into fists his knuckles were white.

Clenching his jaw, he clung to the lifeline the wolf was offering and used it to force his head back into safer waters. It was still a while before he stopped shaking, though, and when he did his whole body _ached_.

“Fuck,” he muttered, hanging his head.

 **::Sorry,::** Geri apologized again in a meek, guilty little whisper.

“Just,” Dean rasped, reaching out and turning off the shower. “Slow. Go slow. It’s—all at once it’s too much.”

So they went slow, usually when they could sneak away from Sam for a few moments, and Dean was never sure which of them felt guiltier afterwards: Geri for making him relive everything, or him for allowing something as childish as the wolf to keep on hurting itself with that filth.

But yeah, they were both right there with each other on the nothing going near Dean’s ass rule.

Only then there was Sam, and the way they both felt about Sam, and Dean knew that Sam would be willing to take nothing more than a couple of kisses and call himself lucky, but the kid deserved more. And being around Sam made Dean think, sometimes, that more wouldn’t be such a horrible idea. Sometimes.

And somehow or other he went from idly wondering how it would have felt it if was Sam, to actually sinking down _on_ Sam, and it turns out it is different after all. Which Dean was hoping for, but not really expecting.

It’s awesome, actually, and therefore confusing, and he stays up after Sam dozes off, watching his _(mate)_ brother sleep while Geri rolls around in the new memory to its heart’s content. He doesn’t understand why this is different. Why _Sam_ is different.

When Sam opens his eyes, Dean knows instantly that his brother isn’t anywhere near the controls. He shifts back, not comfortable lying so close to something that alien, and Geri pops up long enough to give him a reassuring nudge.

“It is a question of power,” the cougar says.

“Uh, what is?” Dean asks. He wonders if it’ll be rude to cover himself. He doesn’t even know why he’s bothered by being naked in front of what is, essentially, part of Sam.

“You were wondering why it was different with us.”

“Dude, are you reading my mind?” Dean demands. “Is that some freaky power you guys forgot to mention to us?”

Geri’s already doing its best to assure Dean that isn’t the case when the cougar, with a wry, decidedly _not_ Sam-like smile, answers, “No. But I knew this would be a difficult moment for you. I wanted to help explain.”

“I don’t need your help,” Dean mutters. Also? He’s _definitely_ getting dressed.

The cougar sits Sam’s body up as Dean gets out of bed, completely unself-conscious of its own nakedness as it watches him pull his boxers back on. His ass feels slick and open and weird, in a way he’s gotten used to not having to deal with, but he knows from experience that that won’t last. Next time, though, maybe they should try using a condom.

“They took your power from you,” the cougar says. “We offered it back. You know we would stop. If you asked.”

“I _did_ ask,” Dean growls meaningfully.

Geri stirs within him, pulled from its fascination with the memory of Sam’s cock by the defensive fear currently tightening Dean’s chest—Dean doesn’t want to fucking talk about this, damn it—and a warm, soothing pulse of affectionate confidence washes through him. These days, he doesn’t even consider rejecting the comfort.

“If that is truly what you wish, I will leave you alone now. But I am here, if you wish to speak.” The cougar hesitates—that sad, wistful expression is definitely one that Dean recognizes from years of living with his brother—and then finishes, “I know you are not yet ... comfortable ... with me, and I will continue to respect that, but I want you to know that what Sam feels for you, I feel. I love you no less than he.”

Dean knows that—knows it because Geri loves Sam with all of the boundless enthusiasm it can muster. He feels vaguely guilty that he can’t summon up the same affection for the cougar that he knows his brother feels for the wolf.

As though reading his mind again, the cougar smiles. “Do not trouble yourself, Deanmate. I wait with glad heart. It is a joy to see you happy, even if only with my other half.”

By the time Dean recognizes the teasing leer in his brother’s voice, the cougar is already lying down again and has shut its eyes. He stands in the middle of the room, not sure whether to be flattered or offended, and then realizes that, with Geri making excited little snuffles while it relives the last couple of hours before Sam conked out, he can’t really afford to take the moral highroad here.

Also, he’s cold standing all the way over here, when he could be curled up alongside his very own oversized space heater.

Squaring his jaw, he pushes the boxers back down and makes his way over to the bed, where he pokes Sam in the shoulder blade. The cougar cracks one of Sam’s eyes and peers up at him.

“Move over, Garfield,” Dean demands. “Seriously, what it is about cats that makes them think they can hog the bed?”


	15. Legend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about six months before the Epilogue of Fetters.

Sometimes, Sam thinks that Dean should come with subtitles—or at least some kind of rudimentary legend. There should be some easy way to figure out when ‘I want some pie’ means he’s been thinking too much about things best left buried, or when it means he’s pissed about something Sam just said, or when he’s just plain old hungry. And Sam should really have an easier way to figure out when Dean’s eager for sex because he’s horny and when he’s eager because he wants to punish himself.

Because Sam is sick of Dean using him like that. It’s not fair to either of them and it’s not healthy. It’s sure as fuck not helping Sam work his mate through his issues the way Sam desperately wants to, either.

Which is why, when he catches a faint trace of that sick, self-loathing scent in the middle of thrusting his cock down Dean’s throat, he pulls away violently and swears, “Goddamn it, Dean!”

Dean stays where he is: on his knees, with his eyes shut and his hands clasped behind his back. His mouth is still open—lips wet and red and slightly bruised, although that’s already starting to heal as Sam looks.

If only Dean’s insides were as resilient as his skin.

The cougar isn’t any happier than Sam, lashing its tail and letting out anxious, panting wheezes in his head. Sam has a moment to wonder whether Geri has any say in what Dean’s doing—if he’s on board with this fucked up coping method or if he tries to argue Dean out of it or if he’s even aware anything’s wrong—and then Dean looks up. He’s still breathless from what Sam was doing a moment ago, but his walls are as high as Sam has ever seen them: eyes shining and opaque, like highly polished brass.

“What, not enough tongue?” he rasps, and the fact that his voice is still that hoarse is a testament to just how rough Sam was letting himself be.

How rough Dean goaded him into being.

“You can’t—you can’t keep doing this,” Sam says, turning away from his mate in an effort to locate his boxers. He lost track of his clothing when Dean came back to the motel room smelling like a bitch in heat and practically mauled him.

Dean’s too good at dissembling, that’s the problem. He’s gotten used to masking thoughts and intentions beneath layers of bullshit, and that extends to his scent as well. And for some reason, much as he’ll second-guess Dean’s expressions until the cows come home, it’s harder for Sam to remember that, when it comes to his mate, he can’t trust his nose.

 **::Not yet,::** the cougar corrects as Sam spots his boxers hanging off the lamp and heads toward them. **::But he does not hide his scent as often.::**

 _That we know of,_ Sam thinks back darkly, snatching the boxers and jerking them up over his wet erection. He’s already started to wilt with the realization of what was going on—what he was unwittingly participating in—but he was really in the moment before he had his little epiphany and it’s going to be a while before the adrenaline has completely left his system.

Strong hands clamp over Sam’s as he hauls the waistband of his boxers up into place, pressing them against his hips. Dean rubs up against him from behind, naked and hard and giving off that fuck-me-now musk that always drives Sam nuts. Sam’s flagging erection revives a little, but now that he’s paying attention he can smell the difference between the scent Dean’s tossing at him now and the real thing: there’s too much desperation to the musk, and that faint, sickening undercurrent of self-loathing that Sam caught before has strengthened.

“Wasn’t finished,” Dean rumbles, nipping at the side of Sam’s neck.

Sam jerks his head away and shoves Dean off, too angry to be gentle. And then freezes at the sudden spike of interest that violent push gets from his mate.

When he turns around, Dean is watching him with coy, heated eyes.

“Is that what you want?” Sam demands.

“Well, duh. I thought I made that pretty clear what with the getting naked and blowing you.”

He’s still playing stupid, all cocksure swagger and innocent expression, and both Sam and the cougar have had enough.

As one, they snap forward, barreling into Dean and knocking him against the motel wall hard enough to crack the plaster. Dean’s whole body has left an impression, actually, and they’re going to have to get out of here soon because there’s no way the noise they just made is going to go unnoticed, but for now they’re having a Discussion.

Dean gives his head a shake, pushing himself away from the wall, and Sam takes advantage of his mate’s brief distraction to grab hold again. He turns Dean, slamming him against the indentation face first this time, and then gets hold of Dean’s bicep with one hand and uses his other to grip the back of his mate’s head, keeping Dean’s cheek flush with the cracked plaster.

“Is this what you want?” Sam repeats, fury lacing his quiet voice. “You want me to hurt you?”

Dean pants silently and doesn’t say anything, but the scent he’s giving off—half excitement, half-desperation—and the submissive way he just stands there is answer enough.

Sam’s going to throw up.

He can’t let Dean go quickly enough, backing away and going into the bathroom to rinse his face. After a minute or so, he hears Dean come over and stand in the doorway. But he can’t look at his mate right now—if he does, he’s either going to burst into tears or kick the crap out of him—so he stares down at the water running out from the faucet.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says finally.

Sam sags, his anger dampened by the dull shame in his mate’s voice. “I can’t be that for you,” he says. “I love you, Dean. I can’t hurt you. I don’t want to.”

“I know. That’s why I—” He stops, unable to finish the sentence, but Sam already knows how it was going to end.

That’s why Dean didn’t bother asking. Why he puts on the eager, horny mask and manipulates Sam into punishing him.

“Geri?” Sam asks, still not looking over.

There’s a pause and then Dean answers, “Geri doesn’t understand. But I’m not—it’s not hurting him. I wouldn’t do that.”

That’s something anyway, but Sam’s chest still aches as he closes his eyes and says, “You’re hurting us.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean offers again, sounding more miserable than ever. “I just. Sometimes I start thinking, and I can’t—it makes things easier, like, when you’re—y’know, when we do that, I can focus on one thing instead of fifty. And, uh, you didn’t have to know, so it was ... it was okay.”

Sam turns at that, and knows his eyes are watering, but he doesn’t care. Dean needs to see this, maybe. He needs to get how very Not Okay it is.

Dean does flinch when he sees Sam’s eyes, immediately looking away and shifting his naked body so that he’s mostly hidden by the doorframe. Guilt is thick in his scent now, the color of bruises.

“Right now we have to get out of here,” Sam says, keeping his voice soft and as gentle as he can manage. “But when we stop again, we’re going to talk. The four of us will sit down and work out some other way to make you feel better when you can’t stop thinking. Okay?”

Dean fidgets—it’s both exasperating and exhausting, loving someone who prefers hurting himself to having an honest conversation—but eventually he mutters, “Yeah, okay.”

He won’t look at Sam as they dress and hurriedly pack up. Passes over the keys without comment, which Sam knows is another means of punishing himself. But relegating himself to the passenger seat like a five-year-old kid is mostly harmless, and anyway it means that Sam isn’t going to have to argue with Dean over whether or not they’re going to Missouri’s.

They’ve come so far together on their own. _Dean_ has come so far. And Sam is proud of his mate, most days. But there are clearly miles left to go, and neither Sam nor the cougar has the faintest idea how to finish the journey.

 **::There is no shame in seeking help when you know you need it,::** the cougar agrees. It’s still rattled from their recent confrontation with Dean, but sounds much happier now that they have a vague sort of plan.

Sam glances over at Dean as he gets into the Impala and sits down beside his silent, withdrawn mate.

 _I’m glad you’re with me,_ he thinks back. _Because it’s going to take both of us to convince him._

 **::Deanmate is worth the effort.::**

Sam sends a pulse of agreement toward the cougar and then, as he starts the car, says, “Dean?”

Dean still doesn’t look over, but Sam senses his mate’s attention on him, sharp and wary like a kicked dog’s.

“I’m upset because I love you—you get that, right?”

For a long moment, he thinks Dean isn’t going to answer. Then Dean stirs and mutters, “Yeah.”

Sam can’t be sure it’s entirely truthful—Dean’s too hard to decipher, which is what got them into this mess in the first place—but there’s at least a grain of understanding there.

 _Baby steps,_ Sam tells himself, and starts to drive.


	16. Cemetery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about a week before Dean's first "confession" in Chapter Thirty Five of Fetters ("Confessions").

Out here on the eastern seaboard, it seems like everything is old, and this secret, quiet place is no exception. No longer filled with the rustling scents of death and decay, instead the night air carries the lighter, more comforting smell of dusty stone, and the heavy loam of the earth, and the clean, sharp green of growing things. The metal bars, which used to ring the cemetery, have rusted and lie in disjointed jumbles on every side. Some of the headstones are missing; others have been so worn and weathered by the elements that only the general cut of the stone remains.

It’s one of these crumbling remnants that Dean kneels by now. When he puts his hand on the rough, pitted surface of the marker, there’s no knowing whose life it was meant to commemorate. Anyone could be lying beneath the weed-choked ground—man or woman, boy or girl. Hell, for all Dean knows, this is one of those weird pet cemetery places and he’s kneeling beside a tomb meant for Fido or Fluffy.

But he thinks not. It’s too still here, beneath the tall pines. Too hushed. No, someone buried a wife here long ago, or a son.

Someone buried a brother.

Dean gives his head a sharp shake. He came here to get away from that morbid train of thought, damn it; crept out from the motel room in the dark, deep of night in search of release. He left Sam sleeping, and the cougar. Carried Geri with him, as always, but the wolf's thoughts are silent with slumber as well, and to all intents and purposes, Dean was alone on his run past the rustic cabins standing at the town's edges. He entered this forest companionless, found this forgotten boneyard on his own.

These days, it seems like he can’t turn around without tripping over Sam. Every time he frowns, Sam tenses and starts giving off that anxious, vinegary scent that leaves Dean's stomach even tighter and more unhappy than it was before. If he's silent for too long, if he doesn't do a good enough job of pretending that it's okay—that _he's_ okay—then Sam responds with a suffocating, silent concern that gets under Dean's skin and makes him want to snap and snarl.

And then there's the way Sam is always watching him, like Dean's going to slit his wrists with the fucking car keys if Sam turns his back for a second. Dean has enough trouble getting through the day without Sam treating him like he's on goddamned suicide watch.

Sam doesn't mean to—Dean knows he doesn't—but the constant care and unwavering worry are akin to having one of Sam's oversized thumbs digging into an open wound. Bastard's continually prodding at all of Dean's weak spots. He keeps bumbling around and jarring memories loose.

Fuck, Sam isn't even here right now, but just the thought of him seems to be enough, because Dean can feel his past surfacing now, coming at him him too quickly and solidly for him to even try ducking out of the way ...

 _Chest straining. Water pressing down from all sides. String of bubbles rising in front of his eyes. Dean’s fingers curl in the metal grating that brushes the surface of the water, keeping him under, keeping him from bursting through to the surface like he needs to. His throat and lungs are burning, and he hates it almost as much as he hates the panic; hates the building certainty that his body is going to betray him again, is going to open his mouth and force him to inhale and it’s going to taste like water on his tongue but it’ll feel like acid when it hits his lungs, oh yes it will—_

Geri stirs inside of him, shifting with a muted whine, and somehow Dean manages to wrench himself free from the memory. He forces himself to breathe—careful reminder that he’s surrounded by air now, and that the tank is long gone. As Geri settles back into fitful sleep, Dean slowly withdraws his fingers from the headstone and stares at the deep gouges he made in its surface.

It doesn’t look like anything but what it is—looks like someone put their hand on the flat surface and dug their fingers into the stone—and Dean feels a tiny, bitter throb of amusement at the thought of a hiker finding this place and trying to figure out what sort of creature could have handled solid rock as though it weren't any more substantial than wet clay.

The path he took to come here is downwind of the cemetery, and that's the only reason Sam gets as close as he does—close enough for Dean to hear twigs snapping and leaves crunching beneath his brother's _(mate's)_ weight—before he notices. He starts to stand as the unexpected intrusion registers, and then his brother’s voice says, “Deanmate.”

Not Sam at all, then.

“Get lost, furball,” Dean mutters, sinking back down into a crouch and keeping his back fully turned on his unwanted company.

“I will not leave you alone like this,” the cougar replies, and Dean stiffens as he hears it move Sam’s body closer.

His skin crawls at the thought of being moved like that. Of something using his body so very, very thoroughly.

It’s hard enough, most times, just sharing space in his head with Geri. He knows that, in a lot of ways, Geri is part of him now, but he just—every time he considers allowing the wolf the kind of control that Sam seems to have no problem offering his own passenger, his chest gets suffocatingly tight and his stomach turns. And even if he immediately shoves the possibility way down into the dark where it belongs, Dean knows what he’ll dream when he goes to sleep that night.

It’s always their hands his subconscious focuses on, for some reason. Rough, masculine fingers or slender, feminine ones. Hands that are old and boney; younger grips, thick with excess weight. Hands of all shapes and sizes sliding over his skin and holding him down. Hands caressing his chest, or doing their best to dig dark bruises into his arms and thighs. Hands guiding his head where they want it, hands thumbing his mouth open, hands nudging his hips into motion or pushing his legs open.

Hands controlling him as though he didn’t have a mind or desires of his own. Like he wasn’t anything but the expensive sex toy Vincent billed him as.

On the worst nights, it’s just one hand—a single touch on Dean’s head, fingers stroking through his hair. The fingers are slender and the palm uncalloused, but there’s surprising strength lurking behind the casual brush. It’s Vincent’s hand—Dean would recognize it anywhere—and the possessive petting is in praise of a job well done. Or maybe it’s the promise of punishment for his latest disobedience.

Dean never did learn to distinguish the difference between the two caresses, if there ever was one in the first place.

“I do not like the way you smell,” the cougar says, breaking in on Dean’s thoughts a second time. If he turns his head to the side he’ll be able to see it looking out at him from Sam’s eyes, maybe wearing one of Sam’s expressions.

Dean thinks about coming back with something pithy and cutting—talk about your openings for a smart-mouthed retort—but it isn't worth the energy it would take to come up with a joke.

“Does Sam know you’re using him like that?” he says instead.

The cougar’s scent goes wounded and sad—crushed mint mingled with the copper of blood—and the smell goes straight to Dean's heart. Fucking cat is wearing Sam’s scent along with his body, and that means that he can’t help the knee jerk response that floods him with shamed guilt. But he can and does ignore the instinctual urge to go over there and rest a comforting hand on Sam’s wrist.

Forcing the impulse down, Dean hunches his shoulders and makes his back a forbidding, hostile barrier between them.

After a long, stiff moment where Dean can feel the cougar looking at him, the cougar says, “It is different between your littermate and I. Sam was not hurt as you have been.”

Dean’s heart beats faster—he’s not fucking talking about that—and he bites out, “Go to hell.”

“I have been there,” the cougar replies, still in that soft, careful voice. “And seen such sights as I would unsee. But that was many seasons past, and the hurts have eased.” Its voice carries far too much meaning for Dean’s liking when it adds, “There is healing in distance and the passage of time. What pains remain, they have been lessened through sharing.”

Sharing with Sam, Dean guesses it means, and doesn’t know that he likes hearing that the oversized housecat has been filling Sam’s head with that shit. Sam has been through enough without having the cougar’s crap heaped on his shoulders. He doesn’t need the damned cat adding to his issues.

Doesn’t need Dean piling on his own load, either.

Not that that’s why Dean hasn’t been talking. It’s just none of Sam’s fucking business, that's all.

“There is no shame in being hurt,” the cougar says.

Dean’s jaw clenches. His chest pulls tight and sore—violently enough that he has to reach out and balance himself against the headstone.

It’s the cougar’s fault for saying dumb shit like that, for fucking _lying_. Dean knows it's lying because there is, there’s a _lot_ of fucking shame. Dean let it happen, he let himself get caught and he let Vincent’s clients do vile, disgusting things to his body. He bloodied himself up for the man; he put people into the ground—lots of them—because he was too weak to keep saying no until Vincent killed him for it.

 **::Would not have killed. Would have hurt Sammymate,::** Geri puts in, and Dean starts—he was too lost in his own thoughts to feel the wolf waking.

 _I should have found a way to end it myself, then,_ he thinks back.

But of course Geri’s been through all of Dean’s memories by now—the whole fucked up, tangled knot of his time in the Arena—and the wolf immediately replies, **::Tried.::**

Dean gets an image along with the word—one of what felt like a hundred futile attempts—his wrist bloodied and mangled, his own blood slick and hot on his lips and tongue and staining his teeth. But that was back when he was still weak and unused to pain, and he passed out before he could do the other one. Woke up in one of the medical rooms with an IV in his arm and his wrist bandaged and Vincent’s hand on his head.

 _I should have tried harder,_ he thinks as the memory fades away again. He makes every word a warning, pushing Geri back as it tries to snuggle close up beneath his ribcage and, after a brief struggle, the wolf subsides with a soft whine.

“We will not lose you,” the cougar says, and Dean thinks it just means itself and Sam until it continues, “You are outnumbered in this hunt, three to one. We will bring you to ground wherever you run.”

Dean’s lips draw back from his teeth in an unconscious snarl and he gives his head a single shake of denial. He feels cornered—feels the collar back around his neck and cuffs around each wrist and drugs dragging down his system. The back of his neck crawls—Vincent's claim of ownership prickling where it's still inked into his skin.

Filled with anxious, panicked energy, Dean shoots to his feet and spits, “He’ll leave. He always fucking leaves.”

Geri shoots him a tiny pulse of rebuke for the words—the wolf is blindly faithful when it comes to Sam, not to mention stupidly trusting—and Dean thinks the cougar might be about to protest as well so he runs. He sprints through the woods as fast as he can move, trying to outdistance the thing wearing Sam’s body—or maybe it’s himself he’s desperate to leave behind.

But it’s a futile attempt in either case, and finally Dean turns his feet toward the motel, cross and vicious with how shitty he feels. He can't bring himself to slow to human speeds as he enters the town proper, and it's sheer luck that the streets are empty at this time of night. The hinges on the motel door scream in protest as he bursts into the room, heading straight over to his bed and curling up with his back flush to the wall. The solid presence of wood helps calm the drumming fear inside of him, but only a little.

As the cougar follows Dean in more sedately—pushy bitch moves the other bed so that it’s lying in front of the front door, like that’s going to trap Dean here if he wants out—Dean decides he’s had enough of this. Sam is pushing harder and harder as time passes—there hasn't been any actual begging, not yet, but from his brother's looks and fleeting touches, it isn’t hard to guess that Sam wants Dean to spill his guts like a little girl.

And Dean’s going to fold eventually—he can’t possibly stand up under that kind of pressure and everyone knows it.

He might as well do it now. Might as well feed Sam all of the sordid details so that Sam will understand what Dean is and go already. He’ll find someone else, Dean’s sure; that mate-for-life crap can’t possibly apply to someone as fucked up and as used up as he is. Shouldn’t be difficult for Sam to find someone better; someone who hasn't been ridden more than the ferris wheel at Coney Island. Someone who can get through a goddamned blowjob without freaking out like a pussy.

Dean gets that Sam is it for him, though. He gets that he won’t survive Sam leaving him this time. He gets it and he's okay with it. Sure, it’ll hurt like hell for a while, but then it’ll all be over. Everything will be peaceful and quiet and still, just like it was in that cemetery.

Dean’s only regret is that he’s going to take Geri out with him—he can’t do anything else, chained together like they are. He feels guilty about condemning the wolf, which also deserves better, but then again it shouldn’t have been stupid enough to pick someone like him. Anyway, Sammy’s more important than either of them, and Dean knows Geri agrees on that point. He and the wolf are both filled with the same, driving urge to make sure that Sam is happy and safe.

Being with Dean isn’t going to make him either.

But Dean's just selfish enough to want a few more days with Sam, so as he watches the cougar settle his brother's body back into bed, he tells himself, _One more week._

They're headed to Nebraska as soon as they're done here—Nebraska by route of Kansas, and there's something extremely fitting about the thought of finishing this there. Oh, it might take a while for Sam to finally see the light, since he can be dense about certain things, but Dean will still know where the end began. Who knows, maybe he'll head back to Lawrence when the time comes.

One last trip to the old homestead before he finds an isolated spot where he can just ... lie down and rest.

When Dean finally shuts his eyes, Hank’s leering face is waiting for him. That's business as usual when Dean's chest feels like it does right now, but tonight, instead of flinching away, Dean stares back. He watches Hank’s mouth smirk as it forms the debasing, scornful words he always loved to toss at Dean.

Tonight, although the words continue to find their mark, Dean’s lips quirk in a bitter smile.

It's almost over.

Soon.


	17. Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set a year and a half after Children of the Oak.

Bonnie hears him coming, but only because he clears his throat before stepping through the door. He doesn’t come in unannounced anymore—not since the time she turned around to find him at her elbow and upended an entire bowl of cake batter while shrieking about ten years of her life away.

“We could always just put a bell on you,” she says now. “Then you wouldn’t have to go around sounding like you’re about to cough up a hairball.”

“That’s Sammy,” Dean answers, coming in and padding over to her side. “Bells and hairballs are for cats.”

He gives her a quick nudge of his nose, brush of his lips—part Geri’s greeting and part his own. She should be used to it by now, a year and half since she joined up, but she still finds her heart quickening and her groin filling with a warm ache. Dean probably notices—his sense of smell is uncanny—but he doesn’t call her on it, and he doesn’t shy away from her like he used to whenever she forgot herself and him enough to see nothing but a gorgeous man.

Now she sees him as Dean, and sometimes as Dean-and-Geri, and it warms her heart to know that he isn’t skittish with her anymore.

“What’s for dinner?” he asks, sniffing the batter she was stirring when he came in. His hand starts to come up, moving slowly enough for her to follow, and she raps him smartly across the knuckles with her spoon. Her gives her a wounded look while he rubs his hand, but they both know full well that he enjoys playing this game with her. After all, he could have had his taste and gone before she knew what was happening, if he’d wanted.

“Not Kentucky Fried Chicken, that’s for sure,” she says as she goes back to stirring the batter.

“Hey,” he says, poking around in the oven and through her bowls of ingredients and generally getting as underfoot as he possibly can. “Be happy I bought take out. I can’t cook for shit.”

“Then why don’t you take yourself off the rotation?” Bonnie replies, although they’ve had this conversation before and she already knows what he’s going to say.

“Sam says we’re supposed to set an example,” Dean answers. He’s sniffing his way away from her now—over to the other counter, which means that the sage she surrounded the pie with isn’t doing any better at concealing it than the rosemary she tried the last time she pulled dinner duty.

Sure enough, in a moment Dean’s lifting the towel off the pie and licking his lips in a way that reminds her, more than anything else, that he has a wolf living inside of him. Even if that wolf seems to be more puppy than predator most of the time.

“Is this blueberry?” he asks.

“ _Dean_.”

Bonnie jumps, startled by the new voice, but Dean doesn’t so much as twitch. Of course, he probably smelled Sam—his _soulmate_ , how much more fantasy epic can you get?—coming into the room.

“Bonnie baked,” Dean announces, taking a good, long whiff of the pie.

“Bonnie always bakes,” Sam responds dryly. He gives Bonnie a friendly nod but doesn’t touch her. Sam doesn’t touch much of anyone but Dean and Bobby Singer—not because he’s cold, he’s just ... He’s more stand-offish than Dean, is all.

 _Just like a cat,_ Bonnie thinks to herself, and has to hide a smile.

“Dude, put the pie down. No one wants to eat something you’ve drooled all over.”

Dean shoots Sam a wide-eyed, starving look as though he hasn’t eaten in days. Not even Bonnie buys that one—she sees him at dinner every night, not to mention breakfast and lunch—and she doesn’t even bother trying to conceal her grin as Sam rolls his eyes.

“I made two,” she says. “Figured someone might be nosing his way in.”

Dean shoots Sam a triumphant look and sticks his tongue out while holding the pie close to his chest. Boys. Sometimes, if Bonnie didn’t know better, she’d swear they were brothers rather than lovers.

“Thanks, Bons,” Dean says, loping over to give her another nuzzle-kiss on the cheek. “You’re a real sweetheart.”

He doesn’t nuzzle Sam on the way out, but Bonnie’s been here long enough to read the shift in Sam’s stance and knows that Dean’s putting out some kind of ‘come and get me’ vibe. She makes a mental note to stay away from their side of the farmhouse for the next few hours.

Surprisingly, though, Sam doesn’t immediately follow Dean out. Instead, he comes closer and leans on the counter, watching her cook.

“I charge fifty bucks an hour for lessons,” she jokes after a few minutes, although she doesn’t think that’s what he’s here for.

Sure enough, Sam ignores the joke to say, “I wanted to thank you.”

Whatever Bonnie was expecting, it isn’t that. Surprised, she puts the bowl down and leans the spoon against its ceramic side. “For what?”

“Dean’s,” Sam says and then stops. He grimaces, glancing over his shoulder in the direction his lover disappeared before looking back and murmuring, “He’s been through some rough spots. I don’t know how you do it, but you—you make him more comfortable in his own skin. He’s happier when you’re around. It’s like—I dunno, it’s like magic, how easy he is with you.”

Sam doesn’t sound entirely thrilled with that fact, and after a moment of confusion Bonnie recognizes the emotion coloring his voice. She can’t help but laugh.

“What?” Sam says immediately, going stiff and offended-looking. He reminds Bonnie of a cat that has just fallen off the counter and is mightily hurt its owner is laughing at it. Not that anyone would ever presume to own this particular feline.

“Good lord,” she says, wiping at her watering eyes. “You’re jealous? Of _me_?”

“I—” Sam starts, and then stops. His gaze goes inward, the way she’s noticed it does when he’s speaking with his own furry passenger, and when he blinks out again he’s smiling ruefully. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Sam, you’re the moon and the sun for him. I’m just the nice lady who makes him pie.”

But Sam shakes his head, mouth serious. “You’re selling yourself short. You’re selling _Dean_ short. He’s a better judge of character than that.” He goes silent for a moment while she flounders with the compliment, doing her best not to blush and start stammering like a schoolgirl, and then, slowly, leans over and gives her a kiss on the cheek.

It isn’t anything like Dean’s careless affection. It’s considering, and sweet, and damn it she’s having that inappropriate response again.

Luckily, Sam doesn’t call her on it either.

“You have a kind soul, Bonnie,” he tells her when he moves back. “That’s pretty magical in and of itself.”

“Now you’re just being silly,” she accuses.

But Sam just looks at her with those wild, gold eyes, and doesn’t say anything.

After a moment, uncomfortable with whatever he’s trying to convey, Bonnie adds, “You tested me. That woman, Pamela, she came out here and she tested whether I—”

“She checked whether you were psychic or not,” Sam interrupts dismissively. “And okay, maybe you can’t actually talk to the dead like you thought, but there are other types of magic.”

Bonnie can’t breathe all of a sudden. She’s forgotten how.

“I called in a few favors,” Sam says, straightening. “Someone’s coming by next week to talk with you.” He looks at her long enough to see that the words have registered and then turns away, heading for the door Dean disappeared through.

“Sam,” Bonnie calls, halting him. “What. I mean, what do you think I ...”

She can’t say it. Can’t ask it. She’s been happy serving in an organizational position, happy researching and sharing her practical perspective in their war councils, happy helping look after the little ones on the farm, but the thought that she could do more. That she could _be_ more ...

“I think you’re a healer,” Sam says softly. “We both do.”

And then he’s gone, leaving Bonnie breathless with hope and as moonstruck as a teenager with a crush. It’s a wonder she doesn’t burn the roast.


	18. Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little over a month after Bones.

They corner Ruby in New York.

It’s her mistake to think they won’t come into the city, that the brief time she had Dean was enough to break him. Her mistake to think Sam wouldn’t have come on his own anyway, even if Dean wasn't strong enough to face her.

She’s wearing a child, and that’s another mistake.

Sam holds her down while Dean says the words—growls them, really, and Sam can hear Geri in his mate’s voice as well, two as one for this. He feels nothing but relief, and hope that this will undo what damage Ruby did in that warehouse.

Dean may not be broken, but there are guilty bruises in his eyes sometimes, when he thinks Sam isn’t looking. He’s worn raw and low. He needs this, and Sam needs this, and the cougar and Geri need it as well.

Sam can’t wait to sink his teeth into the bitch once she’s out in the open where he can get at her. Where he and Dean can end this.

Sam’s mistake is thinking that’s his mate’s plan as well.

The moment Ruby’s true form howls forth from the little girl’s lips, Dean bounds forward and gets a hand around what would be insubstantial smoke to anyone else. He glances at Sam as a demonic howl of rage and fear fills the empty storefront where they cornered her, and that glance is enough to communicate the magnitude of Sam’s error.

Sam drops the coughing, moaning child immediately, shooting to his feet and reaching for his mate, but his hands close on air. He blinks and the door to the shop is broken off its hinges and hanging ajar. The storefront—what used to be a newsstand or a local market at one point, Sam thinks—is empty except for Sam and a confused, frightened child.

Dean doesn’t normally tap into the full extent of his powers, but he’s clearly doing it now and Sam already knows that he won’t be able to catch his mate. Heartsore and sick to his stomach, Sam comforts the child enough to get a name—Emma—and a home—18 Chestnut St in Brooklyn—and then lifts her in his arms and moves out into the night to bring her home. It’s thirty minutes to find the place, then ten minutes back along his own trail to the storefront, where he lets the cougar to the front and scents the ground.

City smell is thick everywhere, but the cougar would be able to track his mate through any scent, and anyway there’s demon reek, thick and unmistakable, to follow. But of course Dean wasn’t taking any chances, and they waste more time on their mate’s meandering, wandering path through the city. The cougar hesitates uneasily when the scent takes him to Bellevue Hospital—an imposing structure on the other side of an old fashioned iron-wrought gate—and makes a distressed panting noise with Sam’s throat and mouth when it discovers another trail leading back out of the building.

The scent has changed. There’s blood now, and the demon reek has been covered with the smell of recent death.

 _He can’t,_ Sam thinks desperately, even though he knows otherwise. Even though he considered otherwise himself, until he realized Dean would never forgive him if he came after Ruby on his own, if he kept Dean out of this hunt the way he was tempted to.

The cougar doesn’t waste time arguing or consoling, but instead speeds them off down this new trail—not far, though, only to a warehouse by a series of docks across from Governors Island. There are no security guards to dodge because they’re all unconscious—Dean’s doing—and now that Sam and the cougar are closer they don’t have to follow their nose any longer. They don’t have to follow that wretched, strange scent of demon and blood and death.

They can hear Ruby’s cries, echoing off the warehouse walls.

Sam is in charge for the slip into the building, but as soon as Dean is in sight—covered in blood already, fuck—the cougar leaps forward and drives them across the intervening space silently and swiftly enough that Dean doesn’t have time to realize they’re there. Sam moves forward again for the death blow, not pushing the cougar aside but mingling with it, and together they drive their fist into the chest ( _through a convenient hole left by Dean, or maybe that was already there when he found this body_ ) and catch hold of the demon within.

It won’t come out.

Sam hisses with frustration, pulling harder, and then finds himself knocked back across the room. When he lifts himself up into a crouch, Dean is standing between him and the screaming, laughing mess chained to a handy table. His lips are drawn back from his teeth, his eyes feral and hard.

“Walk away,” he growls.

“No. Jesus Christ, Dean, think about what you’re do—”

“I have. Bitch is mine. She’s in a dead body, Sam. I’m not fucking hurting any innocents.”

“You’re hurting yourself,” Sam insists, hoping that Dean has recovered enough to care about that.

But he only gets more of that hostile, flat stare as Dean replies, “I’ve done worse. Nothing here that ain’t already broken or dirtied up, so just walk the fuck away already.”

It’s the second time he’s demanded that, even though Sam can’t see a way to stop him. Not when Dean has somehow managed to lock Ruby in that meatsuit. Not when they both know that Sam can’t hope to win in a fight—he doesn’t have Dean’s experience in that department. Dean could be back to torturing Ruby the way he clearly wants to be, but for some reason he’s staring at Sam instead.

Staring and demanding Sam leave.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sam says on a flash of understanding. “So if you want to do this, you’re going to have to do it in front of me.”

There’s a flicker of something over Dean’s face—indefinable and fleeting—and then Dean bites out, “Fine,” and turns around. Sam watches his mate pick up a jagged chunk of metal he seems to have been using as a knife, and is filled with the nauseating dread that he guessed wrong. He’s going to have to watch this.

But he can’t—he can’t see Dean do this, can’t be a witness to what his mate’s pain has twisted him into. He can’t watch Dean degrade and defile himself like this, goddamn it. Fighting back tears, he starts to turn his head away only to be frozen in place as the cougar surges forward.

 **::Wait,::** the cougar insists.

Dean has the sharp edge of the metal against Ruby’s heaving stomach now, ready to cut, and Sam prepares himself for the fresh scream and the flow of blood—partially congealed, Sam sees now, which means the body was dead for a least a little while before Dean put Ruby into it.

Dean doesn’t move. His hand trembles where it’s gripping the metal, tension reverberating through his body.

“Get out,” he says, forcing the words through clenched teeth.

Relief expands through Sam’s chest like a cool breeze and he straightens. “No.”

“Get the fuck out or I’ll fucking make you.”

“Go ahead then, because I’m not leaving.”

He’s worried for a moment that Dean will—the scent his mate is giving off is confusing, and difficult to read even without the added distraction of Ruby’s murky smell—but instead Dean drops the metal and presses a bloodied hand to his face.

“Goddamn it, Sam,” he whispers.

“What’s … wrong … Dean?” Ruby manages, forcing her dead lips into a rictus of a grin. “Can’t … get it up … with … Sammy … watching?”

Dean moves suddenly then, reclaiming the metal and driving it through Ruby’s throat in a single, smooth motion. The metal pins her throat to the table, silences her, and Dean immediately staggers away to lean against a supporting pillar while he throws up. Sensing that he can safely approach now, Sam is by his mate’s side instantly, resting one hand on Dean’s waist and rubbing his back with the other.

“Shh,” he breathes. “Shh, baby. We’re here. We’re here now.”

Even in the middle of Dean’s heaves, Sam can feel him trying to pull away, though, and as soon as he can manage it, Dean gasps, “Don’t touch me.”

It isn’t fear Dean is radiating, though—not like he did in the early days after the Arena, when he let Sam smell anything at all. It’s self-loathing, and disgust, and while that scent makes Sam want to throw up himself, he ignores it and puts his arms more fully around his mate.

Dean resists for a moment, tense and unwilling in Sam’s arms, and then sags and turns into him with a voiceless sob. One of his hands finds Sam’s shirt and fists a bunch of the fabric. His forehead rests against Sam’s shoulder.

Ruby is a gurgling distraction in the background, but this moment is for Dean—reassuring him that he’s loved still despite what he’s done, calming him from the wild, frenzied edge he was standing at when Sam arrived. One minute stretches into three, then to five, and in the end it’s close to ten minutes before Sam feels safe enough to whisper, “How do I end it?”

Dean’s hand spasms where it’s wrapped in Sam’s shirt—tightening clench on a surge of some strong emotion—and then relaxes again as he mutters, “Symbol on her arm.”

“Don’t move,” Sam tells him, giving his brother’s temple a quick kiss and Dean’s arms an affectionate rub before disengaging and moving toward the table.

Ruby’s eyes are laughing, despite the mess. Despite the pain she must be in. It galls Sam and makes the cougar hiss, tail lashing through Sam’s mind, and he spares a moment to lean in close and whisper, “You think you’ve broken him? You haven’t. All you’ve done is shown me what else needs to be fixed.”

It’s true. Because Sam gets the feeling that this isn’t Dean’s first time wielding a sharp implement like this, and that means that there are hurts there Sam didn’t even know about. Wounds he couldn’t tend to because he couldn’t see them. He’s damn well tending them now, though, and fuck whatever Dean has to say on the subject.

Some of the vicious joy has gone out of Ruby’s eyes when he straightens, which makes him feel a little better, and he doesn’t suffer more than a momentary clench of revulsion when he finds the symbol Dean was talking about burned into the body’s flesh. It’s familiar, circle with a bar through one side, and he places it from his memories of the Arena—the same sigil Vincent used to lock demons into their bodies for their fights with the Fenrir. Bile burns in his throat at the thought of Dean using Vincent’s tricks to do this, and it’s a relief to tear the design with one hand.

He catches Ruby on her way out of the body, shreds her into fine, drifting bits of ash that vanish even as they fall toward the floor. When he’s sure she’s gone and won’t ever be returning—in this world or the next—he turns back to his mate.

Dean is watching him, arms wrapped around his stomach in a protective gesture that seems unconscious. He has his eyes fixed somewhere around Sam’s chest, his face set into a distant mask like Sam can’t smell the seething, hurtful emotions inside him.

Sam gives him almost a minute to speak first, and when it becomes clear Dean is willing to stand there until the sun rises or the guards rouse, Sam says, “This wasn’t your first rodeo.”

It’s Dean’s turn of phrase—one Sam hasn’t used before: feels strange in his mouth—but it’s designed to slide past Dean’s barriers and, from the slight shudder of Dean’s body and the sharpening of his gaze, it does. Still, Dean doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to: his scent is telling the story for him.

“Talk to us,” Sam urges. “Whatever happened, however bad it was, we’re not leaving.”

“It’s none of your business.”

It’s a response at least, and Sam takes a careful step closer, noting the way Dean’s nostrils flare anxiously, like a nervous horse’s.

“Tell me anyway,” Sam offers, instead of arguing that it damn well is his business—anything that harms Dean like this is his to be hunted down and killed, even something as intangible as a memory. Inside of Sam, the cougar is radiating a mixture of fear and confidence—if they can get Dean to open up, it has no doubt about their ability to heal the damage. Neither does Sam, for that matter.

 _If_ they can pry Dean’s stubborn, lock-jawed mouth open.

“Please,” Sam tries, which gets him a quick flick of his mate’s intense golden eyes—shadows there, and wariness, and longing. Sam takes a chance, adding, “If you don’t want to talk, can I at least hold you? Just for a couple minutes?”

Dean’s scent fluctuates erratically as his head jerks in something that isn’t quite a yes or no. When Sam tries moving closer, testing, Dean jerks back against the pillar with a sharp breath.

“Don’t!” he barks. “I’m—I’ve got blood all over.”

Sam already smeared a good amount of that on himself when he drew Dean into his arms the first time, but he’s canny enough to see beneath his brother’s words to the meaning beneath. It isn’t the blood Dean is worried about Sam picking up, but the more noxious, darker stain on his soul.

As if any of that is his fault. As if Sam would hesitate even if it were.

“I don’t care,” Sam tells him, and this time, when he moves and Dean flinches back, Sam doesn’t stop. Instead, he crosses the space between them too quickly for Dean to formulate an escape plan and gets his arms around his mate. He holds Dean until the stiffness bleeds from him, until Dean is loose and pliant again in his arms.

“I’ll always love you,” Sam whispers then, and the cougar borrows his voice to add, “And I.”

There’s a moment of stillness—painful, filled with Dean’s desperate, wounded scent—and then, falteringly, Dean says, “His name was Billington. It was—almost a year now.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, but the gentle hand he rests on the back of Dean’s head—like a benediction—must be all that Dean needs to hear because the words keep coming. Another rotten nugget of Dean’s time in the Arena, another client, spotting the man again in Chicago, going after him.

How long it took the man to die.

Tears form in Sam’s eyes. Sorrow lodges in his chest. Not for that son of a bitch whose last hours Dean is painting in too vivid words, but for his mate. His mate, who had to live those hours as well, and has emerged with bloodied gashes of his own.

But they’re gashes that won’t go untended any longer.

As Dean’s words finally dissolve into harsh, reluctant tears, Sam kisses his mate’s bloodied forehead, and strokes his hair, and knows that this too will pass. The puss-filled wounds have been lanced, and they’ll heal properly now.

Dean’s coming back to him, little by little, and stronger for the scars. More beautiful for having endured the pain and come out on the other side.

 **::He will run again,::** the cougar agrees in Sam’s head. **::He will run and he will shine like the moon.::**

 _No,_ Sam thinks, resting his forehead against his mate's. _He’ll shine like the sun._


	19. Energy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about one year after Children of the Oak.

Dean’s been keyed up ever since they hit the wendigo from both sides and ripped it apart. He was showing off on the run back to the car, he was fidgeting on the ride home, and now he’s all but frisking up the stairs. Sam can smell the high-energy arousal on his mate—pre-mating musk mingled with something like lightning and cinnamon—and even if the hunt hadn’t left him in the same mood he’d sure as hell be in it now, after having spent the last four hours cooped up with that maddening scent.

Once they’re inside the room and the door is shut behind them, Sam drops all pretense of casualness: catching the back of Dean’s shirt and pulling his mate flush with the front of his body. Dean comes willingly, giving an enthusiastic little wriggle against him and reaching back blindly to grab Sam’s ass.

“How do you want it?” Sam breathes in his mate’s ear.

He asks ‘how’ because ‘do’ isn’t a question. All four of them are panting for it—the cougar literally so, making harsh, needy noises inside Sam’s head and rolling restlessly through his body. Geri is being similarly distracting inside of Dean, Sam can tell, because his brother is completely loose against him in a way he only ever gets when Geri is close.

The only thing left to debate is the specifics—lube or not, upright or on the bed. Although really, with how Sam’s feeling right now, the bed might not make it through the encounter if that’s the way Dean wants to opt.

Dean doesn’t speak as he lets his hand fall away from Sam’s ass and eases out of his arms. Letting Dean go is difficult, especially when he smells like this—like warmth and desire and home and mate and pure, crackling energy. Somehow Sam manages, but he can’t quite bite back the low, agitated growl that swells in the back of his throat. That’s the cougar’s doing, not his, although the cougar is somewhat mollified by the view as Dean pulls off his shirt and pads to the bathroom.

Their mate pauses in the doorway, sending a quick, playful glance backward that’s nothing but Geri. The wolf’s damned near insatiable when it comes to Sam, likes teasing him almost as much as Dean, and the flickering heat it’s putting in Dean’s eyes right now says ‘come get me’ louder and more succinctly than Dean could manage with just words alone.

Sam doesn’t need asking twice.

Shucking off his own clothing, he hurries to join his mate—who has finished stripping in record time—just outside the shower. Dean has his arm stuck under the spray, checking the temperature. Sam only means to wrap around him from behind, maybe give him a grope or two, but the cougar seizes control _(all water’s the same as far as it’s concerned, no point in waiting)_ and knocks them into Dean from behind. The collision sends them both stumbling into the stall.

The water’s still a little too cool, especially in contrast with Sam’s body temperature, which is running a little hotter than normal these days, and he reaches out to turn the temperature up while biting down on the side of his mate’s neck.

“’S fucking cold,” Dean complains, giving his shoulders a little shake.

Sam grunts in agreement and bites down again, harder this time, which makes Dean swear and jerk. He isn’t trying to get away, though, and when Sam bumps his aching cock against Dean’s ass, Dean cants his hips back for it while bracing himself against the side of the stall.

“Can I?” the cougar asks as it comes forward again and noses at the fresh bruise Sam just left on the side of Dean’s neck. “I wish to mate you.”

Sam’s surprised by the cougar’s initiative—it doesn’t usually do this, contenting itself with watching from the back of Sam’s head—but then again the moment fits all of the andi’s usual requirements for active participation. It just isn’t bold enough to ask their mate for this when Dean isn’t already far enough gone not to really care how he gets it anymore. It’s too afraid of being turned down: afraid of alarming Dean and spoiling the moment.

Sam’s pretty sure that their mate has moved past whatever issues he might have had with the cougar in the beginning, but he understands its caution. They have time to ease into things, after all. Or they will, as long as they survive the coming war intact.

Dean groans, pushing his ass back against Sam’s cock. There’s water in his hair—stray droplets since Sam is taking the brunt of the now-steaming spray—and he gives his head a shake while splaying his fingers against the wall in a helpless motion. Sam can practically taste his mate’s arousal now, lying thick and wet in the air.

“Please,” the cougar begs with their shared voice. Pushing their hand between Dean’s crotch and the side of the stall, it grips his full cock and gives it a pull. “Deanmate.”

“What the hell do you _want_ ,” Dean demands as he bucks his hips in rough, frantic movements—trying to get Sam’s cock where he wants it, or maybe Sam’s hand to move faster on his dick. “An engraved invitation?”

“Permission,” the cougar answers. Somehow, it’s ignoring all the signals Dean is sending out to lightly stroke his side. “I would not mate you without—”

“Just—Christ, Garfield. I don’t give a shit who’s driving, but one of you better fuck me right now, damn it.”

Sam knows from little pulse of contented anticipation the cougar sends his way that it’s going to accept that as permission enough and settles in to enjoy the ride. Sure enough, the cougar doesn’t wait before hauling one of Dean’s thighs up and stretching him wide. Agile as ever, Dean keeps his balance on one foot while continuing to rub back against them with eager, enticing squirms.

He’s moving insistently enough that it takes the cougar a couple of tries to hit the mark. Once it finds what it’s looking for, though, the cougar pushes in immediately. Sam always makes sure to prep their mate when he’s in charge—at the very least, he gives Dean the benefit of lube—but the cougar isn’t following anything but primal urges as it enters and takes.

Dean grunts with the force of that first thrust, insides painfully tight and twitching around their cock. He doesn’t stop moving, though, and his own cock gives an interested jerk where it’s still cradled in Sam’s hand.

“Fuck, furball,” he pants. “Little warning’d be nice.”

The cougar growls in the back of Sam’s throat, getting a firmer grip on Dean’s thigh with the hand not holding his cock and hoisting it still higher. “We will mate you now,” it announces, and then it bites down—hard—on the back of Dean’s neck and starts to move.

The cougar isn’t as inventive as Sam—not because it doesn’t know how; Sam has felt it studying his technique and knows it understands the merits of foreplay. It just asks for this rarely enough that the pent up energy and desire burning inside of it spill out into rough, claiming thrusts and this single bite—deep enough to mark and draw blood. Dean hisses against the side of the stall as their teeth sink into his skin, but he’s still doing his best to move with them, pushing back and down as the cougar snaps Sam’s hips forward and up.

It’s good—being inside of Dean like this is always good—but the angle is awkward in here, the space cramped. There’s water spilling down on Sam’s back _(he doesn’t care, but the cougar isn’t thrilled with that one)_ and he can sense the cougar’s mounting irritation and frustration with the situation.

It’s distracting his own enjoyment—getting in the way of paying attention to Dean—so Sam takes a moment to suggest, _sink?_ , and is immediately answered with a pulse of grateful assent.

The cougar pulls out of Dean just as roughly as it entered him, and their mate lets out a shaky swear, angling his head back over his shoulder to rasp, “Why’d you stop?”

“Come,” the cougar orders instead of answering, grabbing him around the waist and hauling him out of the spray.

Dean follows without a fight, although the way he twists around in their arms and starts kissing them is more than a little distracting. Sam can’t help coming forward a bit himself at that: mingling with the cougar until he isn’t sure which of them is trying to unhinge their mate’s jaw and get their tongue down his throat.

It’s the cougar who finally pulls back with a growl, though: spinning Dean around and shoving him at the sink. Dean grunts at the impact, but he gets with the program right away, hefting one leg up onto the counter without being asked and pushing his ass back like a bitch in heat. He even whines as the cougar steps back into place and fucks home, filling Dean with a single smooth thrust. It’s like sliding into warm silk, and Sam can’t imagine how he lived so long without having this, or even imagining it possible.

“Harder,” Dean moans as the cougar starts to move. “C’mon, open me up already.”

The cougar obliges while leaning down and catching the nape of his neck in their mouth again. It rolls the skin around on their tongue, teeth sinking in and worrying enough to bring a flood of coppery blood. As their hips speed even further, Dean’s muscles give a ripple before surrendering and loosening a little around them.

“Fuck,” Dean swears helplessly as a second, stronger ripple takes him. “Oh, _fuck_.”

The wave of arousal inside of Sam is peaking now: cresting high and driving the cougar insatiate with their thrusts. It isn’t thinking about Dean’s comfort anymore—isn’t thinking about anything but mating—and the rational part of Sam’s mind winces as he sees the counter crack with the force of a particularly rough thrust.

Dean’s still panting for it, though, and he smells just as needy as he did before, which means he’s into it. He’ll probably complain later—just for the sake of complaining, as far as Sam can tell: or so he can guilt Sam into hand-feeding him snacks from the kitchen—but for now Sam keeps his mouth shut and his mind to himself as the cougar finishes for them both, spilling into Dean through thrusts that are finally faltering.

After, it doesn’t pull out: leaving their cock buried deep within Dean the way it always does. It claims to like the intimacy of the sensation, but it can’t actually lie to Sam and he knows that there’s instinct driving this habit—keep the seed buried deep and the mate is likelier to catch. Not that Dean’s going to be managing that one.

A rumbling, sated purr fills Sam’s mind as the cougar licks and nuzzles at the bite on the back of their mate’s neck. It’s finished—they both are—but Dean is still hot and squirming beneath them and now the cougar uses their hand to bring him off, holding their mate’s cock as it finally spurts its own release against the broken counter. Finished, Dean drops his head down and goes limp.

The cougar’s contentment takes on a fond, amused edge as it continues to lap the salt and traces of blood from his skin.

“Nnmph,” Dean manages after a few minutes.

The cougar responds with a gentle nuzzle to the side of his face before pulling free _(Dean groans)_ and scooping Dean up in their arms. Sam watches from the background as the cougar carries their exhausted mate into the bedroom and lies him down on the bed. It doesn’t bother getting a wet cloth to wipe them both down the way Sam would have, instead crawling in next to Dean and starting to clean him with slow licks along his skin—starting with his throat first and then working its way down the to the rest of his body.

“Mmmm,” Dean drawls, shifting lazily. “Feel free to stop that just about never.”

It’s a measure of how far the four of them have come that Dean lies there easily as the cougar licks him clean. His eyes are closed, his face lax. When they get down to his legs, he parts his thighs with a low, aroused moan that draws Sam’s attention to the fact that his mate is more than ready for round two. His own libido gives a mirroring jump—and now that the initial rush of energy has been sated, they can take their time. Savor the connection.

As it licks along the inner crease of Dean’s right thigh, head turned sideways and nose brushing the full sacs of Dean’s balls, the cougar sends a questing thought Sam’s way. For several, tempting moments, Sam considers accepting the offered control over their shared body _(Dean’s fucking irresistible when he’s as unselfconscious as he is right now)_ and then eases deeper instead.

 _I think you’re doing fine,_ he says.

The cougar continues to hesitate—the after-mating cleaning is routine, but it always cedes to Sam for the encore—and then Dean’s hand finds their hair and pats clumsily.

“Why’d y’stop?” he slurs.

“I thought you would be more comfortable if Sam continues,” the cougar confesses. It sounds a little nervous—worried that Dean’s going to be upset it hasn’t withdrawn already—but Dean only scrapes his nails against their scalp and smiles.

“For an all-knowing cat, Garfield, you’re pretty dense.”

For the first time, there’s no accompanying throb of annoyance at the nickname from the cougar. It watches Dean’s face steadily, searching for a hint of the lie it’s sure is there. But deeper, trapped down inside Sam's chest, come the first, faint stirrings of hope. Sam winces and wishes he had control of his hand right now so he could rub away the yearning ache.

 _Well, what’re you waiting for?_ he asks, giving the cougar a mental shove. _Go get ‘im, tiger._

The ache spreads as the cougar realizes that this is happening, that Dean is offering this—offering himself—and then eases into joyful, trembling warmth. Sam breathes a soft sigh of relief and retreats as far as he's able, giving the cougar this moment for itself. He'll have plenty of time to rejoice with it later: plenty of time to be with Dean.

No matter how deep he goes, he can still feel the cougar purring.


	20. Sacred

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About a month before Children of the Oak.

It’s moonfall bright on the land, the air a tangle of color-scents so strong they're almost bewildering. No citybusygreyscent for long runs round, everything full of greens and blues and deeper, more envigorating reds and oranges. Heavy, loamy brown of earth. Violets. Ambers.

It is Forest here, and Meadow. It is Mountain in the distance, rising high over Valley. There are longleggedrunners and treeflitters and skycriers everywhere, and it makes Geri’s skin twitch with the urge to run and hunt.

Instead, he sinks down lower against the ground with a sudden tumbling in his stomach and whines. It’s beautiful, but he shouldn’t be here. He knows he shouldn’t be here. He should be back at the cabin, waiting patiently for Deanmemine to wake.

The earth is cool against the pads of his feet, wet with dew, and something in the sensation reminds him that Deanmemine doesn’t approve of this either. Deanmemine covers up his skin as though it’s something to be shamed of, unless it’s time to mate.

Ooo, mating. Maybe …

There’s a rustle from the brush in front of him, and Geri tenses until the wind brings him a familiar scent. Then he’s up and bounding forward so that he can tumble into Sammymate with a playful yip.

The careful control in Sammymate’s response—cuff around the ears that doesn’t really hurt, brief swipe of tongue on cheek—tells Geri that this isn’t Sammymate at all, but Garfieldmate, shining with energy and alertness beneath the moon. He carries the scent of other places on him—further out, deeper into the valley, and Geri is filled with a wistful longing for the freedom to explore.

Guilt follows, snapping on the heels of that longing like a half-starved, hunger-crazed hound. It is not Deanmemine’s fault he is damaged, after all. Geri can wait for his turn until Deanmemine is healed. He can be patient and stay and—

Geri scrambles back, off of Garfieldmate with a snap of comprehension. Where he is. The depth of his betrayal.

He means to be good, he does, but when he woke and found Sammymate gone from the cabin and Deanmemine still slumbering deep at the bottom of his mind, he just …

He didn’t want to be alone.

Deanmemine is going to be angry. He is going to reek of that ugly, wrathful-hurt scent, the one that’s the color of old blood. And then there will be shame, and revulsion, and flickers of things Geri only half understands—bad things from the bad place, where the red bees stung or the blue sleep smothered, and there was no peace between.

Slinking low to the ground, Geri begins to creep back the way he came.

“Stay,” Garfieldmate urges from behind him.

“Can’t," Geri replies on a whine. "Deanmemine—”

“That body is yours as well.”

But Geri knows better. He understands that neither of them own this body they share. It belongs to the memories, and the hurt—and in the moments when the past is quieted to nothing more than shadows on the wind, then it belongs to Sammymate.

“Won’t hurt Deanmemine,” he maintains. “Back to cabinden. Sleep.”

He starts forward only to stop as Garfieldmate darts in front of him, blocking the way. There’s no threat in his mate’s expression, only compassion, but that’s enough to root Geri to the spot. He drops his eyes, not sure how to show submission in this body that he isn’t used to controlling, and Garfieldmate pads closer.

“Come with me. Let me show you a thing.”

Geri knows he should insist on going back, but he can still smell those distant, unseen places on Garfieldmate's skin, and instead he whispers, “What thing?”

“A sacred place.”

Geri perks up at that—he’s seen such things before, has felt them in his not-skin. They prickle with light and heat, like a beam of sunlight in midwinter. Soothing. Warming.

And some sacred places heal.

Maybe … maybe Garfieldmate’s place can heal the hurt in Deanmemine. Maybe it can soften the harsh, grating thoughts that Geri doesn’t understand, but which leave his fur ruffled and a bad, growling taste on his tongue.

The path Garfieldmate leads him down isn’t really a path at all—or at least that’s what Geri thinks until he crouches in the midst of a thicket to get a better sniff of the ground. Then he smells it—layer upon layer of longleggedrunner-scent. He’s up and bounding eagerly forward instantly, only to crash into Garfieldmate’s front.

When he looks up sheepishly, Garfieldmate is smiling at him in a way that makes Geri want to wag his tail and offer some affectionate licks. He doesn’t have a tail at present—how Deanmemine gets along without one, he doesn’t know—but he can and does lean in close and lick at Garfieldmate’s jaw and mouth before trying one of Deanmemine’s kisses.

Garfieldmate laughs, kisses him back, adds a quick lick of his own, and then says, “No deer here, little runner. Not for long years.”

“No hunt?” Geri asks plaintively.

“Not this night. Some other.”

But Garfieldmate’s words remind Geri that he shouldn’t be here at all ( _shouldn’t be using Deanmemine’s body_ ), and for a moment he feels no better than the fuckingbastardsshitheads who wounded Deanmemine deep inside where he can’t seem to heal. He shrinks back, meaning to dash back to the cabin where he belongs, and Garfieldmate catches his wrist.

“Come. Just a small way further.”

Geri remembers where they’re going then—the sacred place, the healing place—and he allows Garfieldmate to guide him through another thicket, and up a slight hill to the edge of a steep enbankment. They stop there, high over a sloping valley—forest on one side, a small river and plains on the other, and Geri tilts his head back, scenting the colors brought to him on the night air.

He can smell brownearthburrower and nightsoarer and leatherbird. He can smell ash and oak and pine. He can smell flowers, and the rich, life-giving loam, and the solid bones of the ground—rock he’s standing on now with Garfieldmate at his side. He smells the moon, heavy and full. The snapping, cool clarity of the stars.

But there is no hint of that warm spark that he associates with sacred places.

“Garfieldmate lie?” he whuffs, confused and hurt.

Garfieldmate’s face twitches with annoyance before smoothing out again. He steps close, silently urging Geri to sit with him in their high vantage point, and then places his arms around Geri in something Geri recognizes as one of the snuggleclosewarms that Sammymate is always offering Deanmemine. Deanmemine complains about them, but Geri knows he never means his words, and Geri himself loves the way it always makes their shared chest feel almost whole again.

Without Deanmemine's limping, wounded thoughts, this feels even better, and Geri arches his body back into his mate, bumping Garfieldmate's jaw with the top of his head. That gets him a reassuring nuzzle in return before Garfieldmate says, “No. There are no lies between mates. This place may not be sacred in the way you know, but it is sacred nonetheless. There is a power in this land, if we wake it.”

Geri tries to see the slumbering sacred energy, first squinting and then looking with eyes opened wide, and Garfieldmate chuckles.

“You cannot see with your eyes, little runner. You must listen here.” His hand presses to Geri’s chest, fingers splayed wide. “Scent with your heart.”

“Heart can’t smell,” Geri insists, but Garfieldmate only laughs again, softly, and noses his ear.

“Listen,” he whispers. “Hear what might be. Feel the warm fire on a winter’s night. Hear your mate’s joyous purr, the bark of a cub. Taste the fresh kill on the dry ground. Scent the trails laid down, thick and twined. Hear you, little runner? See you?”

Geri does, he thinks. It's confusing, but ...

Cocking his head, he offers, “Not be far-roamers? Make den with Sammymate and Deanmemine?”

“And others,” Garfieldmate agrees. “New allies taken in a time of war might become pack if offered the chance.”

Geri likes the sound of that even better than the rest of Garfieldmate’s suggestion. Deanmemine has been alone too long. Sammymate and Garfieldmate are good for him, and Geri does his best to fill up the empty space left over, but Deanmemine needs more than just the three of them. He needs cubs to remind him to smile more often, and packmates to warm his chest with companionship.

Deanmemine was never meant for the solitary life they’ve been living, and Geri doesn't much like it either.

“The places we claim with our hearts can become sacred if we will it,” Garfieldmate says, and those are words Geri can smell the truth of on the air.

This place Garfieldmate speaks of—the place with the pack, the den—it has a magic of its own. A healing touch.

“Bring pack now,” he demands. He isn’t quite sure how to do that himself, but Garfieldmate is wise. He will know the way.

But Garfieldmate only laughs, biting teasingly at the corner of Geri’s jaw. “We must build first: a house as well as allegiances. But I have been searching and this place … this place is unclaimed and clean. There are no old ghosts lying uneasily beneath the soil, no blood on the grass. We can rest easily here. We can wake the earth.”

Tipping his head back, Geri feels his lips stretch wide into a grin as he scents the clean night air and imagines everything that Garfieldmate is promising. They could live here, the four of them. They can make a den, build a pack. This can be their place, the place that can finally fill that empty spot in Deanmemine's heart. A place Deanmemine thinks of as _home_.

This place may not be sacred yet, but they can make it so.

“Will make den," Geri decides. "Wake earth. Heal Deanmemine."

Garfieldmate kisses him gently, with a tenderness that Geri is used to finding in Sammymate. When Geri twists his head around to look, though, he sees no trace of his human mate in the peaceful golden eyes looking back at him.

“Not just him, little runner. This will heal us all.”


	21. Heaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about three weeks after Ghost.

Sam smells it before he sees it. The scent floods the room, sudden and unexpected and cloying. Like flowers at a funeral and dusty sunlight in a church. It smells old. Worshipful.

 **::Brightlight,::** the cougar says, sounding surprised, and Sam turns and there it is.

As far as first impressions go, Sam isn’t very. The angel looks like any guy on the street—messy dark hair, rumpled overcoat, too-dry lips. The expression on the angel’s face isn’t too bright, despite the cougar’s name for it: the angel looks like it isn’t sure where or even who it is.

Well, whoever it is and whatever it wants, it damn well isn’t welcome—not in their bedroom. The whole farm is Sam and Dean’s _(their territory to hunt, theirs to protect)_ , but this place—this one place—is private. This is Safety, it’s Den, it’s Home. This is the place where their scent is laid down heavy and so intermingled that even the cougar can’t distinguish between the two; where Sam can come after a stressful day, even if Dean is away, and bury his nose in the scent of Deanbrotherpartnerloveminemate. And he knows Dean does the same—has caught his mate rolling around in their bed once or twice when he got home early from patrol.

No foreign scents have been tracked in here since they finished fixing up the place. No one has ever disturbed the private sanctuary that they’ve carved out for themselves. Neither of them even had to make it a rule; people just seemed to get that stepping across the threshold was off limits.

Hell, the only two people who’ll even come into this corner of the farmhouse without being ordered to are Bobby and Bonnie.

And now this creature. This creature standing in the middle of their den like it belongs there and getting that dusty, old scent all over everything.

Sam’s lips pull back unconsciously from his teeth.

“Samuel Winchester,” the angel says. “We must speak.”

The cougar snarls forward before Sam can move, and he’s surprised to realize it’s even angrier than he is: the unwelcome intrusion only exacerbated by old grievances.

“You were offered a chance to speak when my kin were being slaughtered, brightlight,” it hisses, circling warily to one side. It’s thinking about attacking, looking for an opening as the angel turns with their movement.

“I am sorry for that,” the angel says, and the sad tilt to its eyes make Sam believe that it isn’t a lie. “We would have aided if we could, but we had ... other problems.”

The cougar hisses again—filled with old memories that Sam has glimpsed before but never really examined—and Sam realizes that his other half is planning on ripping the angel into tiny, bite-sized shreds. He can feel the cougar’s rage _(left our kin outside the gate, left them to die, listened to the deathlessdark come and rip and rend and tear)_ , and it’s almost strong enough to carry both of them, but ...

 _It’ll soil the den,_ he thinks, and then tosses an image at the cougar—trying to mate with Dean in the reek of blood and death, trying to sleep in it. That gets through like Sam knew it would and the cougar retreats to seethe silently, tail lashing.

The angel is still looking at them with those childlike blue eyes, standing stiff and wooden in the spot where it appeared. Sam wonders if it knows how close it just came to dying. If angels can die.

 **::They can,::** the cougar comments, voice dark and eager for blood. **::Lead it outside and I will show you.::**

Sam ignores the cougar to demand, “And now ... what? You want to kiss and make up?”

“Now our problems are the same as yours,” the angel replies placidly. “I was sent as an ambassador. I seek an alliance between our people.”

The cougar hisses again inside Sam’s head, and this time he catches a sharper flash of memory. There’s no blood in the place the cougar remembers: andar don’t bleed. But the smell ... the smell is the same that Sam has come to associate with death, overlain with the reek of sorrow and useless, futile rage. And there’s a filmy kind of substance covering the trees and the ground and the high, closed gates. The flimsy, already-fading remnants of a massacre.

 **::We went to them for help,::** the cougar says as Sam struggles with the ramifications of what he’s seeing. **::But they would not come to the gate. And when the deathlessdark came upon the Vlesi Speakers while they waited outside, they murdered all they found while the brightlights listened behind their high walls.::**

Vlesi. The cougar’s word for andar of gentler temperment. Swans, deer, hares. Undefended, on what was meant to be a peaceful mission to the angels, and therefore helpless.

It’s difficult to remain rational and cling to the understanding that, as little as Sam wants to deal with a race who turned their backs on the andar when their help was most needed, it may very well be necessary. He and Dean can’t bring Lilith’s army down on their own.

He focuses on that knowledge—and on the need to keep Dean safe—and channels it toward the cougar in a tight, focused burst. The cougar clings to its rage for a moment longer before reluctantly subsiding. It still isn’t any happier about the situation, but Sam senses that it agrees about the necessity of their position.

“We’ll listen to what you have to say," Sam announces, "But I’m not talking without my mate.”

He turns, moving toward the window. Outside, he can see Dean grinning as he leads Greg through one of Dad’s patented physical endurance routines.

Sam hesitates—Dean hasn’t been sleeping well since he returned from his last intel gathering mission, and although his mate hasn't said anything, Sam knows that Dean's sleep habits are tied pretty closely to his peace of mind. Leading these daily training routines is the closest Dean comes to relaxing these days, and Sam is reluctant to tear his mate away a moment before Dean is ready to stop. Disturbing his mate for what’s bound to be a tense meeting is pretty much the last thing he wants to do.

But they need this, and there’s no telling how long the angel will wait. Sam’s just going to have to make it up to Dean later. Maybe corner his mate and _make_ him talk about whatever's bothering him while he's at it.

There’s a rustling sound as Sam starts forward again, and a scent like feathers, and suddenly the angel is standing between him and the window. The confusion on the angel's face has vanished, devoured by an expression that Sam wants to label as panic.

“No,” the angel says. “I would speak with you alone.”

 **::It hides something,::** the cougar mutters distrustfully.

It’s more warning than Sam needs.

Frowning, he says, “Why? You have to know I’m going to tell him everything afterward anyway.”

“Yes,” the angel admits. “But I would prefer not to speak with Dean—and not for the reasons you think.”

Sam’s jaw, which went tight at the angel’s admission, pulls tighter still. “Oh really? Because I’m pretty sure that this is holier-than-thou bullshit about being in the same room as a murderer.”

“If it were, do you really think I would be here with you?” There’s sudden steel in the angel’s eyes; the threatening curl of power in its voice.

For the first time since he turned to look at it, Sam believes he’s dealing with a Warrior of God.

He shuts his mouth, reeled back by less by the revelation than by the unexpected reminder of his own guilt—the hunters he callously sent to die as a diversion, Hank _(son of a bitch deserved it, do it again in a heartbeat)_ , Bela. The cougar swells inside of Sam, filling him with reassurance and warmth and a tiny, throbbing thread of resentful dislike directed at the unwanted brightlight.

It’s the resentment that gives Sam the strength to straighten and say, “What, then? You give me one good reason why you won’t talk to Dean, or I’ll walk out of this room and leave you here. You can have your conversation with the dresser.”

“Because I failed him,” the angel answers unexpectedly. The otherworldly grandeur drops away from it, leaving behind a rumpled errand boy with slumped shoulders. “Because in another future than this one, he and I might have been...”

The angel trails off without finishing, but Sam understands what it’s saying just fine. He stares into those blue, hangdog eyes and vibrates with a vicious, furious desire to spread the son of a bitch’s insides around the room for even thinking about it—they can always get a new room. Build a whole new goddamned wing on the goddamned house, if it’s necessary.

The cougar isn’t any help controlling that impulse, hissing and scratching against Sam’s insides wildly, but it’s maybe the very violence of their reaction that saves the angel.

There’s just too much rage flooding Sam’s system to process the command to attack.

“He’s my mate,” he manages finally, in a tight, lashing voice. “He’s _mine_.”

“The servants of Heaven stand at the crossroads of time,” the angel replies softly. “We see all roads, even those that remain untraveled.”

Sam can’t even begin to fathom a world where he isn’t everything to Dean, where Dean isn’t everything to him. The very idea is anathema and makes his stomach lurch. It shrinks his lungs and tightens his ribcage so that every breath hurts and narrows his eyesight to a tiny, dark pinprick. Inside of him, the cougar isn’t handling the concept much better.

Ignorant or uncaring of the effect it’s having, the angel continues, “In all the possible worlds, down all possible roads, he’s the one waiting for me at the end. My redemption. My damnation.”

Sam blinks his vision clear enough to see the angel cock its head with an ironic twist to its lips.

“He’s the only mortal I ever love.”

Sam’s hand is around the angel’s throat before he means to move. He has the thing pinned against the wall, all of his instincts screaming at him to finish it—to put down the threat. Avenge the old wrong and protect his mate with one simple movement. All he has to do is tighten his grip.

Then his mind flickers to Dean—to the sad, hurt way Dean will look at him when he finds out what Sam has done. Dean, his brother. Dean, his mate. Dean, who still seems to think Sam is innocent after all of his crimes, after all of the blood that’s already staining his hands.

 _It’s not human,_ he argues with himself. _Dean won’t care._

But neither he nor the cougar can bring themselves to believe that.

The angel swallows against his grip, unresisting, and regards Sam with steady, sad eyes. Ready to accept whatever punishment he wants to inflict. It isn’t going to fight him. It isn’t going to lift a single finger to defend itself.

Which, perversely, only makes Sam angrier. He doesn’t know whether he’s sinking deeper or if the cougar is rising, but their shared fury is mingling them more closely than they usually get, and it’s becoming difficult to separate out which thoughts belong where. Difficult to tell who they are.

“You son of a bitch,” they spit, vibrating with futile rage. “You can’t have him. You try to take him from us and we swear to God we will end you.”

“I couldn’t even if I did try,” the angel replies with a bitter smile. “I never said he loved me back.”

Some of the possessive fury dims at that admission, but Samcougar is still plenty mad enough at the daring of this brightbastardlight to covet their mate in the first place and they can’t make themselves let go.

“Why the fuck are you telling us this?”

The angel just looks at them with that sad, bitter smile, but something in the expression registers and Sam’s body jerks slightly from the almost physical jolt of the cougar separating itself out again.

The consuming, possessive anger damps, making rational thought possible once more, and Sam is able to hear—and, more importantly, comprehend—when the cougar says, **::Because it will see Deanmate eventually if our talks proceed, and it knows it cannot hide its scent from us. We would smell the desire on it.::**

And likely rip the angel’s throat out before it could explain.

Hell, Sam isn’t sure he’ll be able to control himself even if he knows it’s coming. Not with Dean in the room, sending out that soul-deep, comforting scent that Sam loveswantshungersforneeds.

He knows he has a problem with jealousy—they both do; either it’s some weird berserker thing or just him and Dean messed up and intertwined like usual—but it’s never been this bad before. Never been this thought-eradicating or intense.

Because none of the other jealousies ever felt like a threat, Sam realizes. There’s something different about this angel, though. Something infuriating. It’s as though Sam can smell all those other paths on it. He can taste all the ways that this stupid-looking creature in the wrinkled trench coat means something to Dean in other futures than this.

Christ, Sam isn’t going to be able to work like this.

“Have them send someone else,” he says.

“You don’t want to deal with someone else,” the angel replies immediately. “Trust me.”

“Why not?”

“The others are ... unhappy ... that your brother bonded before he could fulfill his greater destiny. They would not be kind to him, or to you.”

Inside of Sam, the cougar has gone very, very still. “What greater destiny?” Sam asks for both of them.

“He was to host the archangel Michael in the coming battle.”

The cougar doesn’t so much hiss this time as yowl, and the barrage of knowledge and memories it throws Sam’s way all filter down to one resonating, final fact.

The souls and minds of archangel hosts are destroyed, wholly and utterly, by the power they must contain.

“Out,” Sam manages through the film of red covering his vision. “Get out before I can’t help myself anymore.”

The angel’s eyes widen at the expression on Sam’s face and, after a brief fluttering sound and that dry scent of feathers, it’s gone. Sam’s hand closes on thin air and he bites into his lower lip to contain the furious, feral scream that wants to claw free from his throat.

How dare they? How dare they even _think_ about doing that to his mate?

 _They can’t take him,_ Sam tries to reassure himself. Not in this here and now, where he’s bonded with Geri and therefore off limits.

But while Dean may be safe from the angels, there’s still Lilith. There’s Lilith and there are all of those rich, sick fucks who have already put their hands on Dean. Who hurt him. Who probably still get off to the memory of hurting him.

It hits Sam, suddenly and vividly, just how vulnerable Dean is even with Geri’s strength—how precious and needed he is—and his head pulses alarmingly. He shakes with the force of his emotions: fear and rage and love now a physical pressure beneath his skin, all of them jostling against one another and pushing to get out.

 _Dean,_ he thinks. _God, Dean._

 **::We will keep him,::** the cougar promises, its tail lashing with shared agitation. **::We will watch over him.::**

But neither of them knows whether that that will be enough.


	22. Angels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set one month after Omen.

They’re almost home when Dean smells smoke curling in through his open window. And it’s not from a barbeque or cook fire, either, because there’s too damn much of it, and anyway the flavor is wrong. Domesticated fires taste different on his tongue—they carry hints of the meal to come. This smoke sits heavy and black and threatening, and besides it’s the wrong time for anyone to be up.

Well past midnight, and dark, and fuck, they never should have left.

Dean wrenches the Impala over to the side of the road without hesitation.

Sam smells it now too—Dean knows from the way his mate doesn’t complain or even ask why Dean stopped. From the corner of his eyes, Dean sees Sam following his lead and getting out of the car. Then they’re both running, moving through field and a brief stretch of forest faster than the car could carry them.

When they burst out of cover within sight of the farm, Geri gives a distressed, grieving whine at the disaster waiting for them.

There’s smoke everywhere, thick and clogging. Flames burn against the black sky as they eat through the wooden frame of the main house. From one of the smaller buildings, a sharp crack followed by the tinkle of glass signals one of the upper story windows blowing out. The heat is a living, invisible thing, pulsing around Dean’s skin in syrupy waves.

But it isn’t the fire that closes Dean’s throat and steals his breath. It’s the dark lumps strewn on the ground around the buildings—shapes that carry the stench of burnt flesh and recent death. Geri has curled up small and tight inside of him, shivering and stunned, and Dean finds himself unexpectedly, unbearably alone as comprehension takes him.

“No,” he whispers as his knees buckle with the weight of his guilt. “Oh God, no.”

“Dean,” Sam says sharply, grabbing Dean’s arm and pulling him straight again. “Dean, look at me.”

But Dean can’t take his eyes off the blackened bodies lying on the earth—bodies he can’t put names to because the faces are missing. Charred limbs twist and reach for the sky. He wants to believe that some of their people got out, but the only sound in the night is the fire’s roar.

If there were anyone left, surely they’d be trying to douse the fires. They’d be busy covering the bodies of the dead with blankets, wouldn’t have left them to lie where they fell.

Bobby. Bonnie. Ellen.

The kids.

“Dean, please.”

“My fault,” Dean whispers. “This is my fault.”

Sam’s fingers dig into his arm, sharp and painful. “No. We don’t even know what happened here, you can’t—”

“I was the one getting restless, I wanted to go on that hunt, I—” The rest of that gets lost in Sam’s shoulder when Dean is dragged into a tight embrace. He struggles briefly—doesn’t fucking deserve to be held when he did this—and then grips back because, worthy or not, he needs the comfort. He needs his mate’s unflinching love and support to keep his mind from snapping back into the Arena where it wants to go.

Back to the screams of burning women and the sick, bitter taste of failure in his mouth.

“Well, isn’t this cozy.”

Dean jerks away from Sam at the unexpected voice, moving to stand between his mate and the potential threat before he’s even finished processing the intrusion.

The voice belongs to a man—or something in a man-shape, anyway, because the figure reeks of unhappy, horrified despair, and there’s only one thing that smells that bad. The figure—the demon—smiles when it sees it has their attention, but before Dean’s instincts can take him snarling and leaping in the demon’s direction, it’s joined by another. And another. White eyes on all of them, cold and cruel, but even so Dean thinks he and Sam could take them, if not for the steady stream of flunkies coming around the side of the burning building.

These aren’t demons—not with eyes glowing in the firelight like molten copper—but Christ, Dean wishes they were because he can smell them now, and that familiar, stomach-turning scent has jolted him out of this moment and straight into another.

 _Face pressed into the thin mattress of his cot. Arms twisted behind him, wrists pinned at the small of his back by a sweaty hand. Legs forced painfully wide to accommodate the crushing weight of another body on his—this one heavier even than the fat fuck Dean serviced last week, because muscle weighs more than flab and Hank is built like a goddamned tank. Pain and shame and cringing humiliation make Dean’s stomach lurch with every grunting thrust—the son of a bitch taking Dean here, waking him from an exhausted, uneasy doze and tainting the closest thing he has to a safe place in this bloody, defiling cage._

 _He’s worn out (_ fought last night, and then there were three clients to take care of _) and drugged (_ blue blue blue, everything is blue and heavy and slow _) and Hank isn’t either, so there’s no real point to fighting. Dean tries anyway. He fights as hard and as violently as he can to get free—to get Hank off of him—and Hank is laughing in his ear and calling him pretty whore, and slut, and puppy, and—_

 **Deanmemine!**

 _Dean blinks, stilling briefly in confusion and then crying out hoarsely (_ that’s it, howl for me, good dog _) when Hank ruts back in again._

 **::No time for thenhurts,::** _the distant voice calls._ **::Come back. Danger. Danger now.::**

 _Then Hank bites down on the nape of Dean’s neck, deep and hard, and yanks him up and—_

—and it isn’t Hank at all, it’s _Geri_ , and that’s _Sam_ trying to keep hold of him and fuck, fuck, Dean’s heart is ricocheting around in his ribcage like a bullet.

“Hank,” he pants.

Sam flinches at the name, expression running from dismay to concern to annoyance to anger and then shutting down into the competent game-face he always wears when they’re in the middle of something and don’t have time to deal with all the touchy-feely crap the way he always wants to. “Dean, you have to focus, man, I need you—”

“No. I’m fine.” It’s a lie, but one Dean knows he’ll be allowed under their present circumstances, and sure enough Sam doesn’t so much as blink as he clarifies, “They smell like Hank.”

Their unwelcome company should have attacked by now—it would have been perfect timing, with Dean lost in his own mind and Sam busy trying to manage him—but for some reason they’re just standing there waiting. Probably because the sons of bitches want him and Sam to know what’s happening when they’re disemboweled.

“Hybrids?” Sam asks tightly, and Geri gives a panting whine in Dean’s head as he shuffles through Dean’s memories of sparring with Hank and realizes just what they’re up against.

Three white-eyed demons, what looks like close to thirty hybrids, and a partridge in a pear tree.

They’re so fucking screwed.

“Lilith got tired of waiting,” the lead demon says, reclaiming Dean’s attention. “She was worried you didn’t get her message.”

Dean’s stomach turns as he remembers the ghouls, and Geri gives a frightened whimper inside of him—thinking about Gleipnir, probably, which is a threat Dean hasn’t quite been able to grasp himself. Not that he doesn’t have his own worries. After all, he has no trouble understanding that if Lilith gets her hands on him, his time in the Arena is going to look like a cakewalk.

“We got it,” Sam answers while Dean struggles to function through the twofold fear flooding him. “We just weren’t all that interested.”

“ _Your_ opinion isn’t important, pussy cat,” the demon sneers, and then shifts its milky, blind gaze to Dean.

These motherfuckers actually expect him to come willingly. Jesus Christ.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to pass,” he manages to say. The words come out sounding surprisingly steady.

“Are you declining the honor?”

“What can I say,” Dean mutters, scanning the faces of the hybrids in an attempt to figure out if any of them still have a shred of sanity left. “That collar look is so last year.”

One of the hybrids snarls at him, baring all of his teeth, and Dean catches a glimpse of metal around the guy’s neck. Oops.

“Lilith doesn’t take kindly to having her invitations rejected,” the spokesdemon comments.

“Yeah, well, if Lilith wants a pet, maybe she should try the pound.”

“Oh, she has,” the demon answers with a sly grin. “She’s been shopping around, looking for a suitable home for the mutt while she breaks you both in.”

Dean starts and feels Sam do the same beside him.

 _Can she do that?_ Dean demands, reaching toward Geri and pulling the wolf close. _Can she separate us?_

It doesn’t answer with words, but the snatches of Gleipnir lore it feeds him don’t look too promising.

The thought of being separated from Geri turns Dean’s insides cold and brittle, but it isn’t the weak, helpless fear that he’s used to feeling at the thought of Lilith getting her hands on them. No, this is the sharp, edged fear that cuts and maddens and angers, and he finds his lips drawing back from his teeth in an instinctive snarl.

Fuckers are going to have to bring him to that bitch in a body bag.

From the subtle shift in Sam’s stance to his left, his mate has scented Dean’s intention to fight and is ready to back him. Between the two of them, they should at least be able to thin the ranks before they fall. Dean glances over, catching Sam’s attention long enough to offer a quick flash of a smile, and receives one in return.

It isn’t much of a goodbye—certainly isn’t the one Dean wants to go out on—but it’ll have to do.

Standing just in front of the burning farm, the demon tilts its head in acknowledgement and then, with a casual gesture of command toward the hybrids, says, “Kill the cat and subdue the dog. Minimal damage, remember. You’re expendable. He isn’t.”

Dean flushes, momentarily confused by the wash of embarrassed fury that runs through him at the proprietary words, and then embraces Geri as the wolf lunges to the surface. When they move forward to meet the hybrids’ charge, it’s with the two-as-one sensation of completeness that leaves Dean with the illusion of having clawed paws instead of hands.

He rips open the throat of an overzealous grunt on his charge in and then growls as he thuds into the hybrids’ front line—an impenetrable wall of muscle and teeth. Two more of the hybrids go down in quick succession—one neck snapped, another back broken—and then Dean pivots and drives his closed fit into a fourth hybrid’s chest hard enough to shatter the ribcage located behind a protective layer of muscle.

The hybrid grunts but keeps coming, its eyes blank of anything but the slavish devotion of a fanatic. It throws a punch that glances the side of Dean’s face and Dean is about to return a punch of his own when something heavy plows into him from the rear, gripping him in a bear hug and trapping his arms at his sides. Snarling, Dean throws his head back and connects solidly with a fifth hybrid’s face. He feels a spray of blood—broke the fucker’s nose, then: good—but the arms caging him don’t slack. And he can see about eight more of the crazy bastards closing in on him.

Off to the left, Dean catches sight of Sam fighting against his own mass of over-muscled bodies. His mate has a knife in his hand, at least, and is spilling a lot more blood than Dean has so far, but five hybrids are just throwing themselves at him while a demon looks on with a blade of its own, and it isn’t hard to guess their strategy. All they need to do is hold Sam still for a few moments and the demon will dart in and open his throat. Game over.

 _No._

Forgetting their own situation, Dean and Geri make a wild lunge in their mate’s direction, desperate to get over and help him. They’re actually starting to drag the hybrid hanging onto them in that direction when another massive body collides with them, sending them all down to the ground in a tangle of limbs and leaving Dean on his stomach at the bottom of the pile. More hybrids pile on as soon as Dean is down, obscuring his view and driving the breath from his lungs. It’s nearly impossible to get any air with so much weight on top of him, but Dean is concerned with more than breathing as he twists and strains to reach the blade he just remembered is tucked into his boot.

Should have grabbed it before, wasn’t thinking, fuck, he has to get up, has to get to Sam—

He’s so focused on getting out from underneath the hybrids that it takes him a few minutes to realize that there are newcomers to the fray—men and women squaring off against the hybrids with long, silvery blades that they wield with easy competence. And they’re having enough success that some of the hybrids weighing Dean down are getting off the pile and moving to face the new threat.

Hallefuckingluhja.

Relief and hope swell in Dean’s chest, giving him the extra burst of energy he needs to complete his reach and get his fingers around the knife handle. The weapon is in his hand a moment later, and he squirms over onto his back and drives the blade into the soft belly pressing down against his. The hybrid blanketing him screams, eyes widening and then immediately dulling as Dean rips the knife up through flesh and bone, carving himself room to move.

The spill of wet heat over his own stomach is a distant, unimportant sensation—and anyway, it isn’t any worse than he’s felt before in the Arena—and Dean keeps his expression still and calm as he looks past the dead hybrid to the next in the pile. The hybrid looks back at him with a leer—clearly doesn’t know what’s happening yet, but it catches up quickly enough when Dean wraps both hands around the knife handle and shoves up as hard as he can. The hybrid jitters, mouth opening in a red, blood-dribbling scream that tells Dean he’s managed to force the blade through all of the dead meat separating them and into the second hybrid’s body.

He grins, fierce and feral, as he twists the blade. The hybrid screams again and then goes limp, pressing Dean more firmly into the earth.

“Puppy has a claw,” a low voice rumbles—third and topmost on the pile, now that the others have rejoined the fight. There’s a scar twisting the right side of this hybrid’s face into a permanent grin, but Dean thinks that the expression isn’t too far off from what the son of a bitch is feeling as it reaches down and grips Dean’s throat. The hybrid isn’t trying to kill him—Dean can tell from the careful, slow tightening of its fingers—but then again, it doesn’t need to. It just needs to cut off his airflow long enough to leave him limp and unconscious.

Heart beating more quickly, Dean jerks his hands and tries to dig his way up through the second body. He doesn’t have the right angle for the knife, though, can’t reach, and his mouth gapes as he fights futilely for breath.

“Go to sleep, puppy,” the hybrid tells him, and Dean groans at the back of his throat as the weight on top of him shifts.

The hybrid sounds like Hank, and to Dean’s de-oxygenated brain, it looks like Hank too. Hank’s face swells in his fading field of vision ( _grinning, fucker was always grinning_ ), and Dean’s throat works against the fingers blocking his airflow.

“Shhh,” Hank ( _not Hank, Hank’s dead he is he is he_ ) breathes, his breath gusting close and fetid over Dean’s face.

This isn’t Dean’s type of fight, pinned and on edge and still thinking too much about the Arena, and as darkness pushes in on him, he stops fighting and cedes control to Geri. The wolf snarls through him, filling Dean’s body with a brief surge of energy, and then lunges up against the hybrid’s hand.

It isn’t a move Dean ever would have tried, sending the world momentarily black and making his head pound alarmingly, but the tactic is unexpected enough to work and Dean feels his teeth sink into the hybrid’s throat. It’s Geri who bites down, but Dean regains control a moment later, and it’s him who jerks his head from side to side, worrying the skin between his teeth and releasing a hot, wet gush into his mouth and down onto his chin and throat.

The pile of dead hybrid on top of him jerks one final time and goes still.

Coughing and trying to catch his breath, Dean releases his latest kill’s throat and turns his face to the side. Blood continues to pour down on his face, getting up his nose and into his mouth, but he can gasp in at least a little air like this, and after a short while the flood slows to a trickle. He gives himself several breaths to focus past the throbbing of his head and the burning in his chest and then starts working his way free.

By the time he’s finished belly crawling out from underneath all that dead weight, the fight is over.

The hybrids and demons are all down and mostly unmoving, along with one or two of the unexpected reinforcements. The remaining newcomers are moving around among the bodies, delivering death blows to one or two determined hybrids, but for the moment Dean ignores them ( _and the weird, dry feather-scent coming off of them_ ) in favor of hurrying over to his mate.

Sam looks a little dazed, and he’s cut in a couple places—sporting a broken cheekbone that’s already healing as Dean brushes it with his fingertips—but he’s alive. He’s going to be okay.

Oh thank God.

“Jesus,” Sam breathes, eyes widening as he takes in Dean’s own appearance. “Are you hurt?”

Dean shakes his head. “None of it’s mine,” he explains, wiping some of the excess blood off his cheek and spitting to clear his mouth a little.

Sam starts to relax, relief loosening his body, and then stiffens again as his eyes shoot to a distant point over Dean’s shoulder.

“Oh, what now?” Dean complains, turning, and then goes rigid himself.

There are figures emerging from the dark line of trees. People. _Their_ people.

Dean sees Bonnie and Bobby toward the front, and then Ellen and her daughter leading a bunch of kids, and the Bell clan, and Eli and Nellie Parks, who’s cradling Eileen in her soot-streaked arms. There are gaps—he can’t spot Rachel Brewer or Winston Grange—and injuries—Chris Anderson is being all but carried out by his brother Sal—but not one minute ago, Dean thought everyone was dead, so calling this a pleasant surprise would be a vast understatement.

He starts forward—he has to make sure all the kids are accounted for—only to be stopped by Sam’s hand on his arm. When he casts a glance over, the relief dancing in his mate’s eyes is tempered with reluctant concern.

“You don’t want them to see you like this, Dean,” Sam points out gently.

With a start, Dean remembers the blood soaking him—remembers that he looks pretty much the same way he used to after a particularly pleasing performance in the Arena—and his chest pulls small and tight. He turns his back on their people, hunching his shoulders and glancing at the dark woods that he and Sam ran through a short time before. Maybe he can make it to cover before anyone realizes he was even here.

He takes a single step forward and then stops as an unfamiliar man moves directly into his path. The guy’s wearing a tie and a long, light-colored trench coat. His hair is a dark, messy tumble, and he’s wearing the grimmest expression Dean has ever seen, but he’s also holding out a wet towel. Dean’s thankful enough he could almost kiss the dude.

“Thanks,” he says, taking the towel and using it to wipe down his face and neck. “And thanks for the assist. Are you guys friends of Bobby’s?”

Trench Coat’s eyes flick to Sam before he answers, “We hope to be friends of yours.”

Dean glances at his mate, taking in the unhappy, tense set of Sam’s shoulders and the sullen wariness in his mate’s eyes. But as uncomfortable as he clearly is, Sam also seems resigned to the situation, and unsurprised, which means he actually knows who these people are. After a few moments of wracking his brains, Dean remembers the conversation he had with his mate—oh, almost seven months ago now, it must have been—and suddenly everything clicks into place.

“Angels?” he checks, taking a second look at their rescuers. “No shit, really?” Then, casting a quick glance back at the people approaching from the woods, he adds, “You guys responsible for saving their bacon?”

Trench Coat nods somberly, still watching Dean in an intense, unblinking way that’s starting to feel a little strange. “We rescued everyone we could. We have been keeping watch for some time now, as part of a good faith gesture. And,” he adds, with a considerate nod toward Sam, “In an attempt to remedy wrongs done in the past.”

Sam looks not at all pacified by that explanation. “What, it didn’t occur to you to step in _before_ they torched the place?” he snarls, scent going sour and unpleasant.

There’s only one emotion that smells so damned pungent and neck prickling on Dean’s mate.

Not that Dean gets what the hell Sam has to be jealous _about_.

Then Sam moves in even closer to him, slinging an arm around Dean’s waist and leveling a belligerent, challenging stare at the angel, and it isn’t difficult to read between the lines on _that_ particular maneuver.

Dean’s beginning to think Sam left part of his conversation with this dude out when he told Dean about it.

For his own part, the angel seems to be taking Sam’s hostility in stride. His expression remains calm and his voice serene as he says, “We are few. The loss of even a single soldier is disastrous, and without allies, we must choose our engagements sparingly.”

“Why the hell did you bother interfering at all, then?” Sam demands.

“Sam!” Dean barks, because there’s being ungrateful and then there’s being an asshole and then there’s kicking your rescuer in the mouth.

Somehow, Sam’s managing all three at once.

The set of Sam’s jaw remains unapologetic, but the angel ignores him and looks at Dean as he says, “We could not let you be harmed.”

Trench Coat means more than he’s actually saying, Dean senses—both does and doesn’t mean the both of them. And he knows he’s reading the angel right from the way Sam is bristling possessively and all but hissing at his side.

Dean maybe enjoys how riled up Sam can get at times, but he really isn’t in the mood to put up with any territorial bullshit right now. Not after the night he just had. As though Dean and Geri could ever even _look_ at anyone else.

Jerking his arm free where it was trapped between their bodies, Dean holds it out in the angel’s direction. “Dean Winchester,” he announces. “And if it’s allies you’re looking for, you’ve got ‘em.”

“Castiel,” Trench Coat answers, taking his hand and giving it a brief, polite shake. There’s nothing polite or brief about the way he’s looking at Dean, though, and Dean finds himself flushing and glancing away as he takes his hand back.

Inside of him, Geri is peering out with curious interest, too concerned with the new experience of actually meeting a brightlight to have noticed the way that Sam’s scent has shifted yet again. Good thing, too, because when Sam smells like this, a bout of rough, claiming sex isn’t all that far off. And when there’s sex of any brand to be had, Geri is more than a little bit of a horndog.

Not that Dean isn’t all for a roll in the grass himself, but right now he’s just… not in the mood. Not when he has other people’s blood on him. Not when memories of Hank are so fresh and raw in his head.

Thankfully, before he has to deal with the brewing situation ( _from Sam’s expression, he’s thinking about starting a brawl before dragging Dean off into the woods to mark his territory_ ), a familiar voice calls, “Dean! Sam!”

Dean lifts his head, picking Bobby’s waving figure out from the crowd, and then takes the opportunity to detach himself from both his mate and the angel.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he murmurs, already raising a hand in a return greeting as he trots in Bobby’s direction. He feels two pairs of eyes boring into his back along the way and has to stifle a sigh.

It’s gonna be a long alliance.


	23. Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set five months after Fear.

It’s strange, waking up to the sound of laughter. Especially this type of laughter—high and free and with the slight shrillness that always edges children’s voices. The cougar is already awake, listening with the mingled amusement and annoyance with which the very old always seem to view the very young.

 _How long have you been up?_ Sam asks as he rolls over to pull Dean in close to his side. And then, when his hand encounters only empty bed, adds, _Where’s Dean?_

He doesn’t ask how long Dean has been up: the lack of even the faintest remnants of warmth on the mattress tells him it’s been a while.

 **::The cubs woke me some time ago,::** the cougar replies, answering the questions in order. **::And I do not know where Deanmate has gone. He was not here when I woke.::**

Sam sighs, rubbing his face with one hand as he sits up. “Do you know if he slept at all?”

 **::He was still on watch when I slept.::**

‘On watch’ is a good way to put it, Sam thinks humorlessly as he gets up. Dean hasn’t relaxed since they finished the new housing complexes and everyone moved their families in. One single, unseasonably chill April weekend and their numbers swelled from a manageable twenty to an unruly sixty-five, not including all of the cats and dogs ( _and one cockatiel_ ) that are suddenly leaving trace scents everywhere Sam turns.

The added pressure of so many people in close proximity is part of what’s bothering Dean—Sam knows because he feels it himself after having spent five years alone with his mate. Oh, they moved through the human world plenty—hunting, gathering supplies, brushing up against lives as they went—but it seems there’s a difference between slinking unnoticed through the world and actually living in it.

Dean in particular isn’t comfortable with so many people living with instead of around him—not yet, anyway. Sam and the cougar are both hopeful that Dean’s natural love of socializing will bring him back out of his shell once he gets used to his new living arrangements, though, and Sam saw some marked improvements in his brother over the winter.

But that was before the children came.

There are fifteen of them, ranging in age from a sweet four months ( _Eli and Nellie Parks’ baby girl, Eileen_ ) to seventeen and chomping at the bit ( _Rachel and Zeke Brewer’s son, Max_ ). The Bells are responsible for almost half of that count: Reggie brought his four boys and his sister, Carla, had two boys of her own from a previous marriage, plus a single girl with her current husband, John.

Dean took one look at all those young, innocent faces and went into guard dog mode. For the past month, he’s been pushing himself even harder than usual—running double perimeter checks on the property, heading further and further out from the farmhouse to do them. He’s restless even when he has just returned, constantly scenting the air and starting at any loud, sudden noises. These days, Sam has to be content with pressuring his mate into bed for a few measly hours a night, and even then he isn't sure how much sleep Dean is actually getting.

Not much, judging from the sluggish scent of exhaustion that continually hovers around him.

Even more telling, Dean has put away his gun and loaded himself down with knives ( _at his waist, in his boot, strapped secretly to the inside of his forearm_ ). Dean has never liked using blades—Before because closing with their quarry was too risky, After because it was too vivid a reminder of night spent beneath the glaring Arena lights—but Dad always drilled into both their heads that guns are too risky around kids. There's too much potential for a small, fragile body to take on friendly fire in a gunfight.

 _If he doesn’t get some real rest soon, he’s going to collapse,_ Sam thinks as he hurriedly dresses. The cougar sends a throb of agreement and then, hesitantly, a suggestion of just how they can grant their mate a brief respite from his incessant worries.

Sam pauses with his jeans around his knees. _You really think that will work?_

The cougar’s chuffing laugh is the only response he receives and he grins wryly as he finishes getting his jeans on.

“Yeah, okay,” he murmurs under his breath, thumbing the buttons closed and moving for the door. “Stupid question.”

They find Dean right where Sam knew they would: leaning with his back against a tree while he watches the younger children playing some game that involves a lot of running and yelling and laughing in the green space between the main farmhouse and the newer living complex. Some distance away, Max Brewer is doing his best to imitate Dean’s deceptively easy lean. The kid even has a knife strapped to his waist ( _and when his mom sees that, she’s gonna have kittens_ ).

Sam wonders if Dean knows just how well-liked he is around here, despite his best efforts to keep his distance.

As he reaches Dean’s side, Sam nuzzles his mate’s cheek in greeting and says, “Morning.”

Dean grunts an absent response and continues scanning the surrounding area for signs of threat.

Sam lets Dean continue to do the duty he’s taken upon himself, using the opportunity to study his mate out in the bright light of day. Neither he nor the cougar likes what they see.

There are too many stress lines around Dean’s mouth. The skin beneath his eyes is shadowed from lack of sleep. And there's that increasingly familiar smell lingering beneath the fresher scent of the shower they took last night—the faded smudge of weariness that clings to Dean like a second skin.

“I was going to do a perimeter run,” Sam says. “Want to come?”

“You can handle it,” Dean answers, stiffening as one of the kids trips and goes down. The boy is up in the next moment, though, and as Dean grudgingly relaxes again, Sam decides he isn’t taking no for an answer.

“Two noses are better than one,” he says, and when Dean starts to give him a dismissive shrug, he adds, “Anyway, I thought I smelled something funny last time I was out and I wanted you to take a look.”

That gets him Dean’s attention the way he wants it to.

“Where?” Dean demands. Just that, but Sam knows he has him hooked.

Hiding his satisfaction behind a mask of concern, Sam answers, “I’ll show you,” and lopes away without waiting for his mate to agree.

Dean is matching him stride for stride within seconds, of course, and it doesn’t take them more than a few minutes to get far enough out from the farmhouse for all but the faintest traces of people ( _their people_ ) to fade. Sam keeps moving, though—wants that smell completely gone before they stop. It’ll be easier to trick Dean into relaxing if he doesn’t have a constant reminder flooding his senses.

The path Sam takes leads them away and up, into the hillier part of their property. It's beautiful territory, but more importantly there’s wolf-scent here, which Sam knows Geri finds comforting—relax one half of a bonded pair, and you're well on your way to relaxing the other.

Finally, in a wooded glen where the banks of a slow, shallow stream are carpeted with grass and dotted with pale blue wildflowers, Sam stops. Dean wasn't expecting the halt and overshoots him, leaping the stream before turning and padding back over, his golden eyes gleaming in the light and his head up as he scents the air. He has one hand on the knife at his waist, his posture wary and defensive, and Sam realizes that there’s more reason than just Dean's health to tug his mate back from Defcon 1.

It’s too easy for Dean to snap when he’s wound this tight, and if the wrong person got hurt ( _killed_ ), Dean would never forgive himself.

“Here?” Dean demands as he scans the surrounding woods. “I don’t smell anything.”

Before he can figure out that this entire expedition was nothing more than a ruse, the cougar slips forward, seizes control of Sam’s body, and pounces.

They have Dean on his back in the grass in a heartbeat, and thanks to a quick warning on Sam’s part, the cougar is able to pin Dean’s hand to his side before he's cleared his knife from its sheath. They would have healed from what was bound to be a wild slash, sure, but it wouldn’t have been a pleasant way to start this intervention.

“What the fuck, man?” Dean spits when he has his breath back. “Get off me.”

Still hanging on tightly to Dean’s knife hand—it's only prudent; Dean hasn't let go of the hilt either—the cougar noses at the corner of their mate's jaw and breathes in the scent it finds there. The weariness is almost unnoticeable at present, buried under the lemon-sharp edge of adrenaline and the biting, pepper scent of anger. But there’s also, very faintly, a curl of cinnamon-lightning musk.

Arousal.

“I’m serious,” Dean growls, struggling. “We don’t have time for—”

The cougar bites down on the side of his throat and the musk-scent spikes, flooding up and over the anger and mingling with the adrenaline to form a different scent entirely. Something low and warm and pulsing that coils in Sam's groin like heat.

Dean’s legs ease open, letting Sam’s body drop down more heavily on top of him and pushing their erections together.

 **::Your turn,::** the cougar purrs, retreating to leave Sam in control.

Sam doesn't have to be told twice, immediately licking the flesh he finds in his mouth before biting down more firmly and sucking a bruise into his mate’s soft skin.

“We—” Dean says breathlessly. “Sam, we should—”

Sam releases his mate’s throat and then uses his nose to nudge Dean’s face to the side and up, revealing a longer, bared line of skin. As Dean swallows, Sam bites down again and drives a tiny, choked noise from his mate.

“Sammy,” Dean manages, throat jumping as Sam works over another patch of skin. It isn’t quite surrender, but Sam can smell his mate’s willpower crumbling in the force of desire. Taking a chance, he uncurls Dean’s fingers from where they’re locked around the knife handle and then draws his mate's hand up above his head.

When he lifts up to assess Dean's expression, Sam finds his mate flushed. Dean's eyes are scrunched shut—less in avoidance, Sam judges, than in an attempt to focus on the sensations running through his body. Sure enough, now that Sam has stopped sucking on his throat, Dean’s eyes flutter open. It takes him a few tries to focus on Sam’s face, but when Sam is certain he has his mate’s undivided attention, he finds Dean’s other hand and brings it up to join the first.

Dean swallows, blinking, and lets him.

“Stay there,” Sam orders, letting his own arousal color his voice.

Dean’s scent spikes in a distracting way as he struggles with his response to that command and then eases again as he relaxes beneath Sam. “You gonna do all the work, Sammy?” he asks, both tone and scent teasing. He’s still thinking about the kids at the back of his head, Sam can tell, but he’s at least on board with scratching the itch before returning to active duty. Which is a start.

“Gonna strip you,” Sam answers. “Want to see all that gorgeous skin when I blow you.”

Predictably, Dean’s face lights up at the promise of a blowjob. It’s puppyish enough of an expression that Sam isn’t sure if it’s Geri or Dean peering out at him right now ( _the wolf’s just as insatiable as Dean when it comes to the simpler pleasures in life_ ), but the roll of his mate’s hips is all Dean.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” Dean demands, and Sam takes the hint and goes to work.

He removes Dean’s boots first, careful of the knife tucked into the right one, and then peels off his socks. Dean immediately rubs both feet against the grass, curling his toes into it in a way that reminds Sam of how long it’s been since they took a barefoot run. Dean always used to like those, when they could find time, and Sam adds the activity to the list of things they’re doing before he lets Dean head back to the farmhouse.

The knife at Dean’s waist comes off next, laid aside with a careful eye for Dean’s state of mind. Dean doesn’t seem to notice or care about the loss, but then again he still has the arm-sheath, and Sam finds himself worrying about that final step while he undoes his mate’s pants and pulls them off.

“Commando, huh?” he jokes, running a hand up the inside of Dean’s thigh.

Dean grins down at him, easy and unashamed of the freed erection curling up toward the sky. It's a good day, then.

“It was this or fish something out of the laundry basket.”

“Cause god forbid you actually do laundry,” Sam can’t help answering, and then nips lightly and teasingly at the head of his mate’s cock to keep him from responding.

As always, the taste and feel of Dean in his mouth is intoxicating, and Sam is briefly distracted from his goal. Pushing both hands beneath his mate’s body, he cups Dean’s ass and tilts it up, drawing more of his mate into his mouth. Above him, Dean moans. His hips give what feels like an involuntary twitch, pushing him that much deeper, and Sam responds by sucking more firmly.

Inside of Sam, the cougar purrs and stretches, enjoying the moment, but Sam forces himself to give one final, teasing lick and then pulls off. Ignoring both the demanding thrust of his mate's hips and the cougar’s disappointment, he grips the bottom hems of Dean’s shirts ( _both button-down and tee_ ) with one hand and crawls up his mate’s body.

“What’s the hold up?” Dean pants, looking down as Sam moves up to meet him.

“I told you,” Sam answers, working both shirts up the length of Dean's torso at the same time. “I want you naked.”

He gets the shirts up far enough to entangle Dean's arms where they’re stretched above his head, effectively blindfolding his mate when Dean's t-shirt collar catches on the underside of his nose, and then pauses for a kiss. By now, Sam has more than come to grips with Dean’s fascination with kissing, so he isn’t surprised when Dean not only opens for him, but leans up and tries to chase his lips as he pulls away.

“Nuh uh,” he scolds, still holding the shirt with one hand while using the other to shove his mate back down against the tall grass. “No moving, remember?”

“Anyone ever told you you’re a cocktease?” Dean mutters, sounding both cross and petulant. And then in a completely different tone, he whines, “Want more. Now. Please?”

The way Dean’s jaw clenches when he shuts his mouth tells Sam that his mate isn’t thrilled with Geri’s complete and utter lack of dignity when it comes to begging. Laughing softly, Sam leans down and gives them both a second, quicker kiss, and then finishes working the shirts off.

Dean is almost completely nude now, lying there exposed with his arms above his head. Almost. But Sam postpones finishing the job, instead taking a few minutes to make out with his mate the way he knows Dean loves. Slow, deep kisses that draw the seconds out into hours and ignite the air caught between them. Tender presses of his lips, light swipes of his tongue that slowly begin to probe deeper around Dean's moans.

Tracing Dean's lips with his tongue in an effort to encourage his mate's mouth to open wider, Sam carefully works his right hand between their bodies and strokes Dean's sensitive stomach and erect cock with teasing caresses designed to leave Dean frantic for more. It's not completely misdirection—Dean is goddamned gorgeous like this—but Sam would be lying if he claimed not to have an ulterior motive for stirring his mate into a mindless frenzy.

When he senses that both halves of his mate are completely wrapped up in what he’s doing, Sam reaches up with his left hand to unbuckle Dean's wrist sheath. He has the soft leather sheath almost completely off before his mate realizes what’s happening and stiffens. Gripping Sam’s wrist with his left hand, Dean starts to draw his right away.

“Shh,” Sam says, breaking their kiss. “It’s okay. Just you and me here. It’s okay.”

Dean hesitates at that, but it still takes a couple of minutes for him to release Sam’s wrist and relax more firmly against the ground. Sam doesn’t press his luck, quickly working the last buckle open and pulling the sheath—knife and all—away from his brother’s skin. Dean gives a slight, almost imperceptible shudder at the loss, but he doesn’t protest, and when Sam sits up and moves back so that he can take in the entire picture, Dean lies there and lets Sam look.

There are the usual scars, of course—most of them from Before, wounds Sam remembers stitching shut with his own hands. Sam isn’t interested in those right now, though, and he looks past them to enjoy the sunlight warming and highlighting Dean’s muscles—the curve of his hipbones, the dip of his belly and slightly-bowed line of his legs. He watches the way the sun catches and collects in Dean’s hair, leaving it almost golden—an illusion helped by the fact that Dean’s been spending most of his free time outside and is sporting lighter hair because of it. He takes in the gleam of his mate’s sensual mouth, the arch of his cheekbones and lazy flutter of his lashes.

And then, the same way he always does when he has the time and the leisure to look, he studies the smattering of freckles brushed across Dean’s skin. They’re more noticeable than ever before where they dot his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, with Dean so tanned from his time outside. His chest and legs are still pale, of course, but the ginko leaf is clear enough, and Sam finds his own breath speeding as he stares at that spray of freckles just above his mate’s left nipple.

Eventually, just like he always does, Dean grows uncomfortable with the scrutiny and peevishly demands, “You gonna stare all day or are you gonna get over here and suck me?”

Sam privately thinks that he’d be content to stare until the sun goes down, and then take Dean naked in the moonlight, but he knows Dean won’t wait that long. The cougar isn’t that patient either—not with Dean’s needy, aroused musk filling the air—and Sam moves in without speaking. He does steal a moment to lick and bite at the ginko pattern first, but then it’s back between his mate’s legs where he can bend close and do what they all want him to.

When it comes to blowjobs, Dean has two gears—get Sam off as quickly as possible, or get him hard as quickly as possible. Sam knows that his mate is capable of more—there’s too much skill in the way Dean's tongue moves over Sam’s cock: too much ease in the way he sometimes takes Sam all the way down into his throat—but he also knows how Dean became so capable and understands why this isn’t his favorite activity.

Sam, though—Sam’s discovered that when it comes to blowjobs, he’s an equal opportunity giver. He likes the way Dean feels in his mouth; loves how wanton and loose Dean gets when Sam works him over like this. Sometimes, fast and dirty is the right speed—with Dean grabbing at his hair ( _not pulling or directing, Dean wouldn’t do that_ ) and hanging on for dear life until he comes with a shout. Other times, though—like today—Sam’s impulses call for a change of pace.

So he sucks lightly on the tip of his mate’s cock. He gives short little licks to the underside of Dean’s length before abandoning his cock altogether to nuzzle and mouth at his balls. He brings Dean deep into his mouth—not quite deep throating, since he hasn’t been able to learn the trick, but coming close—and then pulls off completely and leaves Dean’s cock twitching and wet in the sunlight.

Dean curses him, of course, but Sam’s efforts aren’t quite teasing enough for him to call a halt or take matters into his own hands. Sam is careful to keep his mate aroused without bringing him close enough to orgasm for the denial of a climax to be painful; keeps a close eye on Dean's scent for cues, as well as watching the twitch and flex of his body.

Sam's own cock is hard in his jeans, and leaking a little, and he eventually spares the hand he’s been using to massage Dean’s balls when his mouth is busy elsewhere to open his pants and pull his erection out. The breeze hits his wet slit and makes his cock jump, and Sam cups it protectively, stroking himself lightly to keep his own libido in step with his mate’s.

He keeps them both there for what feels like hours, lazy and languid with the knowledge that everyone can get on without them for a day or so. Besides, Dean’s going to need to be worn out as possible in order for the next phase of the cougar’s plan to work.

Finally, when Sam can feel his own orgasm rolling into him with irrevocable force, he swallows his mate’s cock as deep as he can and stays there. He fondles Dean’s balls harder with his left hand while jacking himself with his right.

Dean makes a strangled noise, and his left leg kicks where it’s stretched out, and then Sam’s mouth fills with the taste of almonds as his mate comes. Taking his hand off of Dean’s tight balls, he plants it on the ground instead for balance and jacks himself harder, coming with a muffled groan himself. There’s a confusing moment where Sam doesn’t know what to do with the semen still shooting into his mouth ( _it’s difficult to swallow with his own orgasm slamming into him, but he doesn’t want to release Dean’s cock either_ ), and then the cougar surges forward and takes over.

Sam has enough brainpower left to send a grateful pulse and then sinks into the sensations flooding his body. When he swims back around a few moments later, he finds the cougar licking Dean’s genitals clean. His chest is rumbling with something that almost sounds like a purr and one of Dean’s hands is clumsily patting at the back of his head.

 **::All is well,::** the cougar announces, and then lifts their head to look up Dean’s body.

Dean is looking back, Sam sees, although it’s a close thing because his brother’s eyelids are heavy and keep slipping shut before he forces them open again.

 _Let me,_ he thinks, switching back into control, and then moves to lie down next to his mate with his forehead pressed against Dean’s cheek.

“Love you,” he whispers, resting an arm over Dean’s chest.

Dean reaches over to caress Sam’s face in reply ( _he may have trouble getting the words out, but he’s pretty good at showing how he feels_ ) and then, with a deep sigh, starts to push himself up.

Sam tightens his grip. “Not yet,” he pleads. “Can we just lie here for a few minutes? Bask in the afterglow?”

“I’mma call you Samantha,” Dean threatens, but the words are slurred and run together in a yawn as he sinks back down.

Two minutes later, his body goes completely limp as he falls asleep.

Sam gives his mate a while to sink deeper before easing away. When he gets a good look at Dean sprawled out naked and unaware against the grass, something deep in his chest warms.

 _He’s out like a light,_ he thinks.

 **::Sleeping like a bear,::** the cougar agrees, satisfaction tinging its voice. **::We must hide his skins now, before he wakes.::**

The cougar is right, Sam knows—if Dean’s clothes are still within reach when he wakes up, he’ll be back at the farmhouse within moments, and Dean has to take a day off, no matter how angry he’ll be when he realizes Sam set him up. When they get back late tonight and nothing disastrous has happened, Dean will realize that he doesn’t have to worry so much.

But Sam is still reluctant to move from his mate’s side—too entranced by how peaceful Dean looks like this.

 **::We can watch when we return,::** the cougar advises, and then adds, **::You should shed your skins as well.::**

It makes sense—Dean will feel less defensive if he isn’t the only one naked—and it isn’t like there’s anyone out in the woods to see them, so Sam heaves himself to his feet with a sigh and strips. Then, gathering all of their clothes into a single bundle, he jogs up the sloping hill edging the west side of the glen in search of a safe place to store them for the day.

As he bounds over a fallen tree, it strikes Sam that he’s naked out in the middle of nowhere with his brother and a couple of animal spirits, and he laughs, giving his head a disbelieving shake.

“My life is so weird,” he mutters.

Inside of him, the cougar is enjoying the wind on their naked body. It stretches at his words, contented and lazy, and checks, **::Weird is good?::**

Sam grins. “Yeah,” he answers. “Weird is good.”


	24. Shiver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set almost two months after Purgatory.

“I’m not so sure I like going behind Dean’s back like this,” Bobby admits. He finds himself tugging his cap—stupid nervous habit—and forces his hand back down onto the alcohol-sticky table between them.

Sam’s eyes catch the dim light in the bar as he meets Bobby’s gaze—at their corner table, he isn’t bothering to hide what he is—and the golden flare still makes Bobby’s stomach lurch awkwardly. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it, or comfortable with it. Just sitting here with Sam is a little too much like standing next to a smoking volcano for Bobby’s comfort.

If Dean were here, he’d feel better about it. It’s irrational, yes—Dean’s just as dangerous as Sam, even if he hides it better—but Bobby’s a stupid, sentimental old fool and that’s the way of it. He’s gonna get himself killed for that boy someday, like as not.

“You really want to share what’s in that notebook with him?” Sam asks coolly.

At least Bobby thinks it’s Sam. He’s only heard the Other a couple of times, but there’s a distinctive change when it speaks. A slight accent. A deepening of Sam’s voice. And then there’s the way that Sam will look at him then—a way that makes Bobby feel like a mouse in a lion’s den.

Despite his unease, Bobby maintains, “He’s got a right to know.”

Sam inclines his head slightly. “Maybe. But what good is it going to do? What’s the point in scaring him?”

“I don’t know,” Bobby admits. “But that doesn’t change facts none.”

“And what are the facts?” _That’s_ the Other.

All the spit in Bobby’s mouth dries up and he rasps, “You already know, don’t you? Sam said you’d been there. He said you’d seen it.”

“I saw some. I was not at my most observant.” The Other in Sam’s body pulls the notebook across the table and starts flipping through it, seemingly at random. Sam’s face doesn’t change as he reads, and after a few moments Bobby has to look away. He can’t imagine reading that information with a straight face—can’t imagine Sam reading it with a straight face.

But of course that isn’t Sam sitting across from him right now, is it?

Bobby’s unsettled enough to be slightly immoderate in his drinking and he’s feeling a little tipsy by the time there’s a soft gasp from Sam’s side of the table. When Bobby looks back, Sam’s clearly back in control, and he looks lost, and frightened, and all of five years old.

“You’re sure?” he whispers. “She could do that?”

“Probably,” Bobby answers reluctantly. “You know all legends come from somewhere.”

“I thought it was destroyed.” The Other again, but for the first time it seems just as frightened as Sam and Bobby feels an unexpected pang of compassion for it. “We all thought it was destroyed. Many of our strongest warriors died so that it might be so.”

“Well, it looks like you guys missed something, cause unless someone’s been making shoddy Gleipnir knockoffs, then Lilith’s got her hands on the real deal.”

Sam’s back immediately, eyes earnest and worried. “We need to get it, Bobby,” he says. “Now. We have to—if she gets hold of Dean while she has that ...”

He gives a full-bodied shiver and shuts the notebook, head hanging and shaggy hair hiding his eyes. He’s quiet for a long moment, shivering with the force of his fear, but gradually his shivers ease and he goes still.

“You can’t tell him,” he insists without looking up.

“Sam ...”

“You can’t. This’d kill him. He—God, Bobby, he’s so frightened of being trapped again, I don’t know—I don’t know what he’d do. Even the possibility of it could set him off, and I can’t lose him.”

Bobby’s breath catches at the insinuation and Sam’s head lifts, just enough for Bobby to see the gleam of his eyes. Just enough for Bobby to see the pleading there, and the shining tear-tracks running down his cheeks.

“He’s my mate,” Sam whispers, and the expected shudder of revulsion doesn’t come. Bobby supposes he doesn’t really see the Winchesters as the boys he once knew anymore.

“Yeah, kid,” he sighs. “I know. We’ll get it away from her somehow and figure out how to destroy it, although damned if I know how.”


	25. Holy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set five months before Children of the Oak.

Agnes catches them in the foyer one night in mid-December. It’s almost Christ’s birthday—the date set by the Church, anyway—and she's up late trying to finish some more of the hand-woven mittens she’ll be passing out at the homeless shelter come Christmas Eve. There are never enough to go around, it seems, and so as the December days pass, she finds herself staying up until ten, eleven, midnight ...

It’s almost one o’clock when she hears the noises—quiet cursing from the foyer. Whispers. Male voices, so it isn’t the sisters.

Hooligans, maybe, or at least that’s what Agnes thinks, and she pushes her shoulders back and sets down her knitting needles and gets out of the chair. She’s dealt with hooligans before: they usually turn tail and run at the first sight of a habit.

But Agnes knows instantly when she turns the corner that these two aren’t hooligans. One of them is hurt, for starters, and the other isn’t moving like anything but a predator. She freezes instantly, hoping they won’t spot her, but the head of the uninjured man turns and she catches twin glints of something gold and brilliant.

The glint is gone in the next instant, and a man’s voice softly calls, “It’s okay, lady. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

“Sister,” the other one—leaning on the first and clutching his middle with one hand—corrects.

“Yeah, whatever,” the first man says, hauling his companion across the foyer in Agnes’ direction. “We need some bandages. Or cloth. Now.”

“Dean,” the wounded man reproves, although his voice sounds breathy, and now that they’re closer Agnes can see blood dripping through his fingers onto the floor.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” she offers, because she may not be a nurse but she can tell a critical wound when she sees one.

“No!”

That was both of them, spoken in unison, and Agnes shivers at the imagined glint of gold in the first man’s eyes. They’ve paused—more because the wounded man has stopped moving than because she’s presenting any kind of barrier—and now the first man grimaces and mutters, “Oh, fuck it. Hold onto me, okay, dude?”

Agnes has a moment to wonder what he’s planning on trying and then he’s—he’s lifting the wounded man off his feet as though he doesn’t weigh anything at all. Agnes has heard of people accomplishing great deeds in times of stress, but she’s never actually seen it before. Maybe she isn’t seeing it now: they both look like they work out regularly.

The man strides past her, into her workroom, and uses one shoulder to knock everything off the table before laying his companion down. Then, turning to her, he barks out, “You. You’re supposed to help the needy. Help him.”

Then he’s gone, back out into the foyer and slamming the front door behind him before his companion can finish protesting, “Dean!”

Left alone with a gravely injured man, Agnes is frozen. The convent never told her what she was supposed to do in this situation.

The injured man tries to get up, fails, and collapses back against the table with a curse. He’s keeping his eyes shut, she realizes—maybe the light is bothering him. Maybe there’s something wrong with his eyes.

“Hey,” he says suddenly. “Can you—do you have any holy water?”

“I thought you wanted bandages,” Agnes says, stupidly.

“Not for—I’ll be fine, but that stupid son of a bitch is gonna get himself—” He shuts his mouth, jaw clenching, and then says in a completely different tone of voice, “A killing sigil, please.”

“A what?”

The man’s expression twitches and then he says, “A cross.”

Agnes should call the police. Or maybe the mother superior. But instead, she finds herself bringing the man what he asked for and immediately regretting it as he opens his eye to take it from her hand. His eyes are gold, and alien, and she staggers away from him with her breath caught in her throat.

He closes his eyes again—those frightening, beautiful eyes—and then smears the cross with his own blood. He murmurs words—some language she doesn’t know—and the cross ...

The cross blazes with white light.

“Hold it up outside,” he groans, holding the cross out in her direction.

But Agnes is done with this insanity. She’s going to run straight to Mother Superior’s room and wake her up and let her deal with it.

Except as she turns to go, the man whispers, “ _Quaeso, soror_.”

Please, sister.

Something in the tone tugs at her, makes it impossible to turn away. And he’s using the language of the Church, which maybe shouldn’t be reassuring—in the stories, devils speak Latin too—but it is.

“ _Quid est_?” she asks, dredging the words up with difficulty.

The man hesitates for a moment and then answers, “ _Ignis Dei. Quaeso. Is est mea anima._ ”

Please. He’s my soul.

Agnes doesn’t know what’s out there in the night that she’s supposed to be saving the wounded man’s _(angel’s?)_ companion from, but she can’t ignore the desperate love in that plea. She half expects the cross to burn her when she takes it—fire of God, the man called it—but it doesn’t. It’s warm, and throbbing faintly, and that’s it. But light is pouring from it in torrents, and it feels clean. Feels holy.

“ _Angelus es_?” she whispers—can’t resist daring the question.

But the man shakes his head, eyes falling shut as his body sags back against the table. “ _Sam. Mihi nomen est Sam._ ”

So maybe they aren’t angels after all, but the things that flee when she opens the front door and holds the cross aloft—the things with black eyes and reddened, dripping fingers—are very definitely devils. Which makes the two injured men she tends to in the late watches of the night holy warriors indeed.


	26. Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set sometime between the Epilogue of Fetters and Children of the Oak.

It takes Sam a while to understand where it comes from: the fear. The desperation with which he clings to his mate in the night, when Dean sleeps senseless and vulnerable and so very trusting in the circle of his arms.

When the moon is full overhead—sensed even if not seen through the roofs they shelter beneath—the cougar joins him in his vigil, and the soft, loving licks they mean to lay on Dean’s cheeks and along his jaw turn into fierce nips that pull him from his dreams and end in bruising, claiming matings.

After, Sam shakes, and tries to make himself large enough to wrap around Dean completely, and he can feel the cougar within him doing the same with a restless, distressed pant.

 **::There’s blood on the moon,::** the cougar tells him, and Sam can feel it as well, that unsettling ripple in the night around them that means Lilith is on the move.

He turns his mind away then, doing his best to see Dean and not the images that flicker-flash through his head—memories of the visions that shook him in the forest clearing when he sat across the fire from a demon and doubted.

He puts the whole force of his will into turning away from those sights, and so it takes him a while to realize that there are other things hidden between the flashes.

There are blackened, twisted passages of thorn and sinew that stretch on and on for endless leagues. There are pelts, bloodied and raw, strewn across the land. There are red, burnt things that scream and yowl while fire licks through their bones.

There’s Hell. Hell inside Sam’s mind not as an illusion or an imagining, but as a memory.

 _You’ve been there,_ he thinks, too shocked to dissemble.

The cougar regards him with the odd, quiet stillness it gets sometimes, and then, in a slow stream of memories, it shows him everything. The trap that lured it out, the wrenching descent into the bowls of damnation, the torments it endured there.

It shows him Lilith, and her tastes in entertainment. In men.

And when he looks at Dean again, through the clarifying glass of the cougar’s memories, Sam finally understands why he’s so afraid: so desperate to keep his mate safe and away from that twisted, white-eyed bitch.

 _She never killed him,_ he remembers with a hollow, sinking sensation. Not once in an infinity of futures.

 **::She wouldn’t,::** the cougar agrees somberly. **::Better for him if she would.::**

Sam shudders and holds on more tightly to his mate. Dean stirs—unexpected surprise rather than protest at the bruising pressure—and then, innocently, nuzzles at Sam’s jaw.

“S’okay, Sammy,” he mumbles. “’M right here. ‘Yr safe.”

But there’s blood on the moon, and Hell in his mind, and Sam isn’t safe unless Dean is, and Dean is most definitely not safe. Not with Lilith roaming around out there, hungry for andi blood. Not when Dean is everything she’s ever wanted in pet or lover rolled up into one beautiful, damaged package.

But he and the cougar remain silent as Dean offers them comfort, still so ignorant of his own brightness. Ignorant, as well, of the Hell that awaits him if they lose.


	27. Demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during Dean's time in the Arena.

The worst thing isn’t the smell, although that’s plenty bad enough. No, the worst thing is the whispering taunts that start up in the quiet of the early mornings, when Dean is no longer in use and has been returned to his warded cell. The things they say to him lodge in his stomach and chest and leave him curled up in a tight ball on his bed, hands pressed to his ears.

He hates doing that because he knows Vincent’s watching—the steady red light of the camera in his cell tells him that much—and he can’t stand letting the fucker know he’s getting to Dean, but there comes a point every morning when he just can’t take it anymore. His shoulders round and his knees come up and his hands press against his ears and he hums loudly to himself. Metallica, Bad Company, Zepplin.

Taunts still filter in.

Here, puppy puppy puppy. Rip out your kibbles and bits. Got a bone for you, Fido.

Dog jokes. Bitch in heat jokes.

And that’s why when Hal _(no last name, of course: Dean doesn’t need to know those)_ starts whispering in Dean’s ear that he’s a filthy little puppy, Dean flips. One moment he’s being good, he’s spreading and taking it the way he’s supposed to, and the next his hands are red and Hal is a bloody mess on the bed.

“Fuck,” Dean mutters, shaking. He wants to puke and can’t, too horrified by himself—by what he just did—to manage it.

He’s still shaking five hours later when Hank finally pokes his head in to see how they’re getting on.

Dean expects another visit with the monster inside his head after that one _(only apparently he doesn’t need the wolf to become a monster, not anymore)_ , but instead Vincent gives him to Hank for a long, seemingly endless week of degrading training.

Dog collars. Leashes. Fetch and carry. The son of a bitch even takes Dean for ‘walks’, leading him down the corridor outside the demon pens and laughing right along with the black-eyed bastards.

It gets so that Dean’s actually looking forward to nightfall, which is so fucked up it doesn’t even bear thinking about. But at least when he’s fighting and fucking he doesn’t have to deal with that sunken, hollowed feeling in his stomach. He doesn’t have to deal with it because he can zone out, concentrate on being nothing more than a body—and Georgia, his third appointment on the second night, is actually a pretty good time.

But of course in the morning it’s right back to what Hank’s taken to calling ‘obedience school’, and the humiliating, mocking training starts right back up again.

Dean’s relieved at the end of the week when Hank drags him before Vincent, still collared and leashed and moving awkwardly on his hands and knees. Vincent looks down at him with a faint, amused smile that makes Dean want to rip something _(someone)_ apart, but then he remembers that that’s why he’s in this position to begin with and has to fight to keep his stomach in place.

“How are we feeling, Dean?” Vincent wants to know.

Dean hasn’t been allowed to speak all week, and now he casts a quick glance up to Hank for permission _(bitter gall building in his throat at how easy it is to do that)_ before smarming, “Fine and frisky.”

Vincent doesn’t get mad. He never seems to get mad. Instead, his smile widens.

“Good,” he says. “I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better. I take it that we won’t have any more ... incidents.”

Dean’s stomach lurches at the reminder and he drops his eyes, sickened by the wet flash of red in his memory. Vincent’s hand curls around his chin and draws his head back up.

“By your very nature,” Vincent says calmly, “You’re going to attract clients with specific interests in bed. You’re going to have to learn a little tolerance. If you can’t, there are always other options. Do I make myself clear?”

Dean’s mouth is dry, but _(options, other options)_ he makes himself answer, “Crystal.”

Early the next morning, when Hank brings him back to his cell and the demons start in again, Dean closes his eyes and thinks of Sam.


	28. Purgatory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set two years after Children of Oak.

“I just wish something would happen already,” Greg grumbles.

Sam glances over at the kid, who is standing by the farmhouse kitchen’s checkerboard curtains and looking outside into the bright sunlight. His hands keep moving on the blades before him, polishing and honing, as he takes in Greg’s stance—the nervous energy to him. It’s only three days to the full moon, Sam realizes, and wonders how the time slipped away from him.

“Things’ll happen when they happen,” he says, setting down the artificial claw he was working on and resting his hands on the table.

Greg shoots him a quick, hostile glance—kid doesn’t like Sam even at the best of times—and then looks back out the window. “Where’s Dean?” he asks.

Sam has answered the question a variety of ways for the last two weeks—for Greg, for Bonnie, for Jo and all the other ragtag members of their growing army—and he settles for the easiest version now. “Gathering intel, you know that.”

And Dean is, but that isn’t the full story. The full story is that anyone could have done the job Dean’s doing now, and done it faster. The full story is that Dean volunteered to make this particular run because it’s getting too crowded around here for his peace of mind.

Probably doesn’t help that they ran into an old client last month.

The cougar makes a rumbling noise inside Sam, filling him with the sensation of bristling fur and a lashing tail. **::We should have killed him.::**

 _Dean said no,_ Sam reminds it, although of course he doesn’t disagree. Dean’s too soft for his own good, even after everything he went through. He’s maybe softer than ever, in some ways, because he’s still afraid of becoming the monster Vincent tried so hard to mould him into.

Sam has less of a problem with that where he himself is concerned, but he’s willing to abide by Dean’s wishes. For now.

It was still difficult letting him go, no matter how much he understood Dean needed the solitude, and waiting for him to get back has been torture. And it’s even worse than normal because it’s been so quiet. It makes Sam wonder if the recent inactivity has something to do with Lilith’s attention suddenly being elsewhere.

 **::We would know if Deanmate were taken,::** the cougar assures him.

Sam is less than sure about that, but the cougar’s faith helps calm his nerves a little. Although if Dean is fine, Sam’s going to be pissed with him if he’s not back in time to play leader of the pack.

 _If Dean’s not back by Thursday, we’re going to need to handle the kid,_ he reminds the cougar.

It fills his mind with a mental image of ears flattening to a wedge-shaped skull and makes a disdainful, huffing sound. **::We can run the mongrel into the ground with ease.::**

Sam knows that, but it’s easier when Dean’s here. Easier because Dean takes Greg out into the woods and runs with him while the moon is high. It’s a peaceful night, then: Greg content to stay with pack and Dean more than alpha enough to keep a young lycanthrope in line. If Sam has to do it, it’ll be nothing but a lot of howling and scratching at trees and playing chase the kitty.

“Fuck, I hate this!” Greg spits, pounding his fist against the window. “Why don’t they _do_ something? Why don’t they attack?”

Sam has been wondering that himself, and hating the uneasy silence. He knows Dean’s been dwelling on it as well—feels it in the stiffness of his mate’s body in the dark watches of the night. It’s hell, waiting like this.

 **::No,::** the cougar corrects him. **::Not Hell. Glesreu.::**

 _Glesreu?_

 **::The place of mires and wasted dreams,::** the cougar explains. **::The waiting place.::**

Sam sends a questioning pulse and this time the cougar rifles through Sam’s memories before clarifying with a definitive sense of satisfaction, **::Purgatory.::**

 _Purgatory, huh?_ Sam thinks, turning it over in his head.

 **::Yes,::** the cougar agrees. **::And the only way free of Glesreu is through the veil of blood.::**

Grimly, Sam lifts his artificial claws again. And prays that the blood that frees them from this particular mire is tinged with sulfur.


	29. Vision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roughly three months before Sam arrives at the Arena.

Dean has never been so aware of his own heartbeat before. In this artificially imposed darkness, though, his heart and his breath seem to be deafening, drowning out the rest of the world around him and leaving him helpless. He never imagined how crucial vision is to understanding the world. How vital it is to keep him safe.

He’s learning quickly now, though, and he isn’t surprised when Hank’s fist slams into his face without warning, knocking him off his feet and onto the mat. It’s been an entire morning of this: long enough that Dean’s frustration rivals the ever-present buzz of anxiety in his gut. At least there’s no audience for this exercise in humiliation aside from Vincent—the man didn’t want his other fighters seeing the mighty Fenrir getting the shit kicked out of him. Be bad for business.

“Get up!” Hank orders, and then there’s a burst of agony along Dean’s ribs as the asshole’s foot connects solidly with his body. He grunts, fingers curling into the mat, and starts to push himself to his hands and knees. Only to be knocked on his side again when Hank delivers a second, even more punishing kick.

Fucker broke something that time.

Dean cradles his ribs in an automatic, protective instinct while panting out his pain. It’s hard to breathe deeply, and his mouth tastes like slick copper. Makes him want to puke.

“I must admit this is extremely disappointing, Dean,” Vincent says from somewhere off to his left. “I had hoped you’d pick up a little faster than this.”

“You wear the fucking blindfold for a while,” Dean rasps as he struggles onto his knees. “We’ll go a few rounds: you can show me how it’s done.”

“I can see you aren’t taking this lesson seriously,” Vincent’s voice comes again, calculating and displeased. “Perhaps a little more motivation is required.”

Dean doesn’t like the satisfied, considering weight to the man’s words—it never bodes well—and he pulls the blindfold up now so that he can get a look at Vincent’s face. He isn’t supposed to touch the cloth until someone takes it off, but from Vincent’s expression, breaking that rule is the least of Dean’s worries.

“You have two days, Mr. Mason,” Vincent says, turning away from Dean to face Hank. “I’m canceling his appointments so you’ll have full access to him for the duration, but I expect to see some progress on Thursday.”

Dean’s stomach curdles as Hank gives him a wide, hungry smile. The begging pleas he wants to make—he’ll try harder, he can do this—get stuck behind the sudden blockage filling his throat. Anyway, he isn’t quite far gone enough yet to beg to keep his appointments, no matter what the alternative is.

At least Hank doesn’t expect him to pretend he’s enjoying it.

“Will do, Mr. Camargo,” the asshole says now, and then watches Dean gleefully while Vincent gathers his pager and cell phone and appointment book and takes himself out of the empty gym. Dean meets Hank’s gaze steadily—he refuses to show this sick fuck how afraid he is, how sickened by the prospect of being at Hank’s beck and call.

“You gonna sit up and beg for me, whore?” Hank smirks.

The word—so ugly and hurtful from anyone else—doesn’t really register. Hank’s called him that so many times Dean’s starting to wonder if Hank doesn’t actually think it’s his name.

Dean lifts his head higher, trying to project a confidence he doesn’t feel. Later, he’ll probably beg like Hank wants and pride be damned. He usually does. But that’s later. Right now, he offers the man a broad, shit-eating grin and slides the blindfold back in place over his eyes.

“Bring it, bitch.”


	30. Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Arena.

Dean can hear the woman shrieking from where Hank and another of Vincent’s hybrid science experiments are holding him, just out of range of the spotlights. He can’t see her—not all the way on the other side of the cage like she is—but he can pinpoint the moment the ifrit touches her because that’s when her voice cracks and the screams go ragged. Overhead, out of sight, the crowd gives a titillated murmur and Dean’s hands clench into fists.

“Who do you think they’re gonna be rooting for,” Hank breathes in his ear. “Him or you?”

Dean’s saved the bother of responding by the woman’s sudden appearance at their end of the cage. Her hair is on fire; her face blackened and peeling. She should be blind from the heat, but Dean senses her eyes falling on him. He knows she sees him.

Her arm stretches out through the bars, straining and imploring, and then the ifrit is there. It wraps her in a tight embrace, flames pouring out from its body and setting her akindle. She writhes for a few, agonizing seconds and then goes limp.

The twisted, blackened corpse the ifrit carries to the center of the ring bears no resemblance at all to the beautiful, youthful woman who was dragged into the ring minutes earlier.

Hank and the other hybrid are laughing.

Dean blinks away the impotent tears that threaten. He clings to the rage and ignores the shame, the guilt, the knowledge that her death is his fault. His doing because he couldn’t make himself close with the fucking ifrit the last time Vincent put him in the cage with it. Or the time before that.

Vincent is strolling into the cage now, covered with warding and water spells designed to keep the ifrit from getting too close. As Hank and the other hybrid maneuver Dean closer, though, he can see that the man can still feel the heat: sweat is liberally pouring down Vincent's face and soaking his colorful canary suit into a darker, mustard yellow.

“Quite the ferocious fire, isn’t he?” he says, turning and playing to the crowd seated above. “And insatiable, as you’ve seen. Twice, the lord of the cool, damp forest nights has met with this desert prince. Twice, he has been saved only by ebbing power of the sun and the moon’s ascendance.”

Dean’s mouth twists into an ironic grimace. If by ‘moon’s ascendance’, Vincent means a sudden spray of water that kept the ifrit from completely toasting Vincent’s moneymaker, then sure.

“Tonight, on this third evening, they meet for the final time, and the stakes are higher than ever. Our Fenrir fights not only for himself, but for his mate: a delicate flower of the woodland meadows.”

Dean stiffens at the news, twisting his head over his shoulder as the elevator doors open again and disgorge a struggling woman—no, girl. She can’t be more than eighteen yet, and probably not even that. She’s wearing a ridiculous-looking fur bikini, has what looks like a fresh tattoo of a wolf’s paw on her hipbone, and the eyes she flicks around are tinted gold. Contacts, Dean guesses.

“No,” he says, softly at first, and then as the girl is hauled past him and up the steps, he struggles more seriously and shouts, “No!”

His denial is lost in the approving roar of the crowd as the girl is brought to Vincent’s side. When she catches sight of the ifrit playing with the charred remnants of its kill, she begins to shriek and sob, pleading with the men holding her to let her go. Her obvious terror draws a fresh peel of laughter from above, and Dean strains forward.

“Damn it, let her go!”

“Patience, puppy,” Hank chuckles. “It’s not your cue yet.”

Vincent goes on briefly, describing the Fenrir’s fictitious meeting with a she-wolf and the wolf’s subsequent transformation into the beautiful 'Lupa'. And then, finally, Hank and the other hybrid are letting Dean hurry up into the cage and out under the spotlights.

The swell of noise and the sudden press of attention staggers him just as strongly as ever, but he ignores it to hurry over to the girl, crouched down and shuddering. His hands are still cuffed, but he doesn’t wait to be freed before pulling her close to his bare chest and whispering, “Just stay close to me. I’ll keep you safe.”

That’s all he has time for before Hank has him by the collar, hauling him back up. Dean goes, mindful of the warning in Vincent’s eyes, and then stands docilely as the cuffs and collar are unlocked and the chains taken away. He kneels beside the girl, bowing his head at Vincent’s urging and letting the familiar spiel wash over him.

Out of the corner of his eyes, though, he can’t stop looking at the living, crying girl and the smoking bits of flesh that litter the floor. He can’t stop his skin from prickling at the awareness of the ifrit’s nearness: his body is slick with sweat already, and he feels fevered. He can almost pinpoint the fire demon’s location by tracking the sulfuric, hot scent of it as it drifts around the outer edges of the ring.

Finally, Vincent is done and Dean feels the chill of a protection ward dropping over him, just as it did the last two times he stood here. The ward won’t last longer than it takes Vincent to exit the ring, of course, and then all bets are off, but Dean has a couple seconds at least.

He uses them to crouch down and pull ‘Lupa’ to her feet, keeping a firm grip on her forearms when she tries to pull away.

“You gotta focus, sweetheart,” he says quickly. “Just stay behind me and if you see it coming, you run as fast as you can, okay?”

Then the chill is gone, replaced by snapping heat as the ifrit rockets forward.

Every other time, Dean’s instincts have pushed him into playing a dizzying game of tag with the thing. He’s run and run and dodged and run again until Vincent got tired of the display and put a stop to it.

But he can’t run with the girl—not and keep ahead of the ifrit—and Vincent knows it. Looks like he got tired of waiting for the pre-show displays to provide enough of an incentive for Dean to do what he wants.

Even now, filled with the knowledge of what will happen to the girl if he abandons her, Dean’s muscles are still jittery with the urge to run. He tenses in readiness of a quick retreat, then forces himself to stand his ground as the ifrit rolls toward him. The air burns, filling his lungs with heat and making it feel like he can’t get enough oxygen. The sweat on his skin evaporates. He can feel his body baking, as though he’s standing too close to a bonfire.

Behind him, the girl breaks and runs with a scream, heading toward the door to the Arena—locked and no chance of salvation at all, which Dean would tell her if he had the time. But the ifrit must be attracted by the scream, or maybe by some sort of fire-demon lure Vincent hung around the girl's neck, or possibly just has a hard on for toasting chicks, because it immediately changes course in pursuit.

Swearing, Dean darts to the side, putting himself in the way again, and then forces himself to move toward the burning heat. His eyes water, vision blurring so he can't see the blow coming. He sure as hell feels the ifrit’s hand slamming into his side, though. The blow sends him skidding across the floor and leaves his flesh cooked and feverish where it touched him.

Dean would like nothing better than to just curl up and clutch at the burn—now he knows what barbecued chicken feels like, christ—but then there’s a high-pitched, pain-filled shriek and he jolts upright. The ifrit has the girl crowded up against the bars of the cage by the door. It isn’t touching her yet, is playing with her the same way it played with the others, the way a cat plays with a mouse, but that isn't going to last.

Scrambling back onto his feet, Dean launches himself across the intervening space at the ifrit. His hands sear and blister immediately as he closes them on the thing's throat. Agony shoots up his arms, and then down his front where he’s pressed up against the demon’s flaming back. When he sucks in an involuntary, hurt breath, his insides burn too, parched and crisping.

Every instinct he has is screaming at him to let go. He can feel what this is doing to him, knows how goddamned painful the burns are going to be until ( _if_ ) his metabolism heals them, but he squeezes his eyes shut and hangs on tighter. He hangs onto the fucker until, finally, the weight of the ifrit goes limp in his arms.

Only then does he let go, staggering back a step, and crack open burnt eyelids to see—dimly—that the fire licking over the ifrit’s body has gone out.

Dean's knees buckle and drop him onto the floor beside his kill. For a moment, he lies gingerly on his side, arms held out in front of him with fingers spread wide, and tries not to notice the fact that his chest and stomach are covered with third degree burns. Fourth and fifth degree on his hands, where he can see bone in places. He tries not to think about the fact that he’s wheezing futilely through a parchment-paper throat and into burnt, convulsing lungs.

Dean has no way of knowing if whether his body can come back from this, whether he can regenerate flesh and skin, but in this moment that doesn't matter. The wildfire agony eating into him doesn't matter.

The girl is all he cares about right now. That the Girl Is All Right.

Crawling over the ifrit’s crumbling body on his burnt front is painful, but Dean isn’t exactly in any sort of shape to walk or run, and he has to—he has to see. He needs to _know_.

Vincent is standing in the shadows on the other side of the cage and watching Dean drag himself over the ifrit with a broad smile, but Dean tunes the man out. Has to focus all of his attention and energy on making the two-foot trek.

At first glance, the girl seems okay—lying up against the side of the cage motionless and silent, but her right side and back are unburnt. She must have ( _please, oh please_ ) fainted.

Dean reaches for her, grips her shoulder with one ruined hand, and rolls her over.

The left side of her face sticks to the floor and comes off, leaving him staring at smoking, grinning bone.

He wants to howl with the frustrated guilt and rage burning in his chest, but that would only play into Vincent’s show, so somehow he keeps silent. Bows his head to hide the sob that comes anyway from the greedy eyes of the spectators above.

"Very good, Dean," Vincent murmurs on the other side of the bars. "I knew you could do it if you only found the right motivation."

Dean's lips pull back from his teeth in an instinctive, futile snarl as he looks at his keeper—in that moment, if he'd been able to reach Vincent, he would have killed him. Fuck what would have happened to him then, or to Sam. Dean can't think past the man's death—like putting down a mad dog.

But the moment passes, and enough of Dean's sanity returns to care about his brother, and he collapses with a harsh, rasping pant, then coughs as the fresh surge of pain snarls through him. He's choking on the puke that can't get up through his ruined throat, is maybe going to die anyway, except then Hank is dragging him out of the bright lights of the ring and the damned doctor is injecting him with something that takes away all of the world's edges and steadies his stomach again. His last, dimming sight is of Vincent smiling down at him with proprietary fondness.

Dean's appointments are canceled for the rest of the night—for the first time since he woke up here—but even when the gaps in his fingers start filling in again early the next morning, he can't find it in himself to care.


End file.
